David Haig’s new play, Minority Report - adapted from Phillip K Dick’s 1956 sci-fi thriller -  promises audiences ‘an electrifying ride into the future’ when it opens at Birmingham Rep late this month. What’s On recently caught up with the Yes, Prime Minister, Killing Eve and Thin Blue Line actor to find out more...

When actor & writer David Haig agreed to adapt Philip K Dick’s classic 1956 sci-fi novella, The Minority Report, for the theatre, he knew it would be a challenge - but it was the demands of staging a futuristic story which made the project so compelling.

“Simon Friend, the producer, rang me up,” recalls David. “He was a fan of Pressure, my last play, and said: ‘How would it interest you writing a sci-fi thriller based on Minority Report?’

“Immediately my response internally was, ‘What? How can I do this, and is it me? Me, whose plays have been about the First World War and Second World War, and with conventional structures?’ 

“Then I thought that was the very reason to do it. How incredibly exciting to go off-piste and just write exactly what came into my head on the basis of this short story written in the 1950s.”

And he was given carte-blanche to go as off-piste as he chose.

“The Philip K Dick Estate have been incredibly generous and said that, as long as you use the title and the basic premise of Precrime - ie, that you can anticipate murder and get criminals off the streets before they’ve even committed the crime - you have complete freedom to write exactly what you want. And I’ve taken them at their word!”

David is not the first person to adapt the novella - Steven Spielberg turned it into a 2002 blockbuster movie starring Tom Cruise. But the playwright has taken a very different approach and made a fundamental change: his lead character is female.

“I thought it would be really exciting to get as far away from the original story in that sense, but also from the film, which in fact I hadn’t seen when I wrote the first draft of the adaptation. So it felt right to write an exciting part for a middle-aged woman in a sci-fi thriller. It’s unlikely, it’s unexpected, and that’s what’s interesting about it.

“The principle of the play is that the head of Precrime, Julia Anderton, sees her own name on the list as the next pre-murderer - ie, it has been predicted that she will murder - and it’s the last thing in the world that she, as head of the whole organisation, expects. 

“Then the play is 80 minutes of real time from that moment. It’s always through her point of view, and it’s her run from potential incarceration and criminalisation. Will she kill? Won’t she? Will she be proved innocent? Won’t she? 

“Not only is it a sci-fi thriller, the play is an interesting portrait of a woman who has to change her mind on a very important premise. Yes, it’s a sci-fi thriller, but also it’s a conventional play with a story and a journey.”

David’s previous dramas include My Boy Jack, The Good Samaritan and the aforementioned Pressure - but adapting a futuristic tale set in 2050 is a very different prospect.

“The challenges of writing sci-fi for the stage are writing stage directions like ‘the van chases the car at 40 miles an hour, the two collide, there is an explosion of metal and the car bursts into flames.…’ 

“That was the freedom that I adopted when I was writing it. You just write anything that comes into your head, and then the director, Max Webster, and the incredible design team that we’ve got say, ‘That’s possible, that’s not possible, that’s possible, that’s not possible.’ And so we work towards a solution in that way.”

David has also found the notion of writing about a future world fascinating.

“When Blade Runner was filmed, which is also based on a Philip K Dick story, he turned down literally ten to 15 applications for screenplays before he agreed to one. And the one he agreed to was because they created the tone of his world right, and the tone of his world was some bits very dilapidated and old-fashioned, and some bits very modern and futuristic. 

“You have to get a mixture, so that people feel comfortable in the world they’re in but at the same time think: ‘Wow, that’s new, and that might already have happened. and that could be about to happen...’”

And the unnerving part of writing about a possible future is that some of it has already come true.

“The whole premise of predicting crime is very close to us. What has struck me is that each time I’ve done a new draft of this play, it’s been because the whole obsession with, the fear of, the respect for artificial intelligence (AI) has raced forward as I’ve been writing it. 

“I’d already written a draft before Covid, and by the time the lockdowns had finished, AI was rattling forward and I was already out of date, so I’ve had to keep up with those developments. This prediction of how the brain behaves and in what ways it pre-empts stuff and predicts stuff is already there. It doesn’t actually feel so outlandish.”

David is also well known as an actor, playing Inspector Grim in television’s The Thin Blue Line and appearing in series as diverse as Downton Abbey, Killing Eve and the 2013 re-make of Yes, Prime Minister. He’s no stranger to acting in films either, having appeared in hit movies Four Weddings And A Funeral and Two Weeks Notice. He grew up in Rugby and knows Birmingham well, having worked at The Rep more than 40 years ago.

“My wife Julia was born in Coventry, and we met in Birmingham. She was working, at the time, for a very good community theatre company called Second City, and then we went on to work together at Birmingham Rep.

“This was in the era of Clive Perry, back in the late 1970s and early 80s, and I loved my time there. 

“I’ve been back very regularly over the years and have a loyalty to the city. I’m very excited that the show is coming to The Rep, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it fits into that environment.”

And David encourages everyone, not just sci-fi fans, to see Minority Report.

“People who have an open mind to the whole concept of how much our society is watched and monitored - and how much our thoughts are probed, and how much science is racing ahead of any safety - as well as people who just want a straight adventure story, will be excited by it.”

Feature by Diane Parkes

Co-produced by Birmingham Rep, Nottingham Playhouse and Lyric Hammersmith Theatre in association with Simon Friend, Minority Report shows at The Rep, Birmingham, from Friday 22 March to Saturday 6 April