“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time” – now on Broadway in a production by the Ethel Barrymore Theatre”
Lights like stars in the night sky, an actor walking weightless across the back wall of the stage, disturbing sounds giving you goose bumps and a live puppy on stage.
This and more will be offered to a visitor of the National Theatre Production of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time”, a play based on Mark Haddon’s 2003 bestseller novel of the same name. With great vision and a superb cast, director Marianne Elliott brings Simon Stephen’s Tony-award winning script to the Ethel Barrymore Theatre at 243 W 47th Street.
Aiming straight at our emotional nerve system, this glamorous Broadway production could earn a title as “On-Stage Hollywood Drama”. Certainly the four-headed design team, including Paul Constable (light), Finn Ross (video), Ian Dickinson (sound) and Adrian Sutton (music), does not flinch from shamelessly manipulating our visual and auditory senses. But more than any wholesale production, “Curious Incident” forces us to step into the uncomfortable shoes of a social outcast, rather than the shining dress shoes of a beloved movie hero.
Rosie Benton as Siobhan and Tyler Lea as Christopher
Tyler Lea makes his Broadway debut in the role of Christopher, an autistic child, who lives alone with his father, since the sudden death of his mother two years ago. Whoever read the book knows, Christopher can name all the capitals of the world and every prime number up to 7057, yet has no understanding of human emotions.
However, it is not necessary to be familiar with these facts in order to understand the complex character of Christopher, when observing Tyler act or rather interact within his environment on stage. Tyler’s violent reaction to touches, his canny suspicion in the interaction with people and his blunt, quick-witted way of speaking all suggest that Christopher is more than just a “child with special needs”. In addition, Tyler Lea’s physicality is truly a masterwork in displaying the slightly abnormal gait, limb apraxia and muscle tensions typical to people with autism.
The improbable story of Christopher’s quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for a captivating narrative. Exactly for this reason, the play starts with his English teacher Siobhan, (played with a charming vivacity by Rosie Benton), who reads to the audience from a book Christopher wrote in class. It tells the story we are about SEE (as a play within the play) and EXPERIENCE , through visual projections and sound effects that mirror processes in Christopher’s mind .
The narrative starts in Ms. Shears garden, where Christopher finds Wellington lying in the grass, with a garden fork sticking out of his body. The outline of the dead dog, a stuffed animal that displays an almost frightening resemblance with a real pet, remains imprinted on the stage floor through a chain of lights. The spoken lines and order of events is almost identical to the book, yet Christopher’s “first-person” perspective is also rendered as an external reality. Consequently, the audience becomes both insider and outsider to the story, listening to Christopher’s narrative perspective on the incident, while observing Tyler act the scenario on stage.
Under suspicion for killing Wellington, Christopher is taken to prison. Soon after, the audience first becomes witness to the exceptional technology of lighting and projections, which transforms the stage into an architectural draft of his neighborhood. Members of the acting ensemble, which have been standing or sitting on a nearly empty stage, are suddenly situated in different “houses” and as such, gain new identities as Christopher’s neighbors Mrs. Gascoyne, Mr. Thompson and Mrs. Alexander.
However, not only does the stage create new places, it also acts as a reflection of Christopher’s thoughts and emotions. The technical production hereby goes hand in hand with Mark Haddon’s novel in taking inspiration from descriptions and drawings in the book.
Taylor is able to draw images on the floor, which are mirrored on the back wall of the stage, LED lights installed behind mathematically-aligned square-tiles create a stunning landscape of stars in the midst of breath-taking projections of the universe and a toy train taken straight out of a child’s dream foreshadows Christopher’s journey to London .
The acting ensemble (including the outstanding Andrew Long and Enid Graham as Christopher’s parents) switches dynamically between “passive” and “active” roles, once portraying a family member or “friend” of Christopher, once merely a stranger in a grey suit, as part of the masses.
In pantomimed quick-motion scenes, (which bridge the carefully selected narrative parts of the play), ensemble members transform into objects, such as a door or a table. Finally, they lose their function as both, subjects and objects in spectacular acrobatic scenes, carrying Taylor over the stage as part of Christopher’s physical and emotional journey.
The movement directors Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett turn the cast members into a dark wave of humanity that threatens to drag and engulf Christopher. The staging of more discrete interactions, particularly between the sensitive boy and his parents, is often tear-jerking.
Always occurring under the same spotlight, accompanied by the same melody, the connection of Christopher’s fingertips with those of his parents becomes a symbol for the deep love Ed and Judy share for their son – a love, which often remains unsatisfied or rejected by the autistic child. Long and Graham draw multifaceted pictures of the people closest to Christopher, who struggle to manage the child’s volatility and otherness being source to much unhappiness in their personal lives.
With a production that assaults and pleases our senses in the same breath, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time” is manipulative beyond question, at last with its verbose ending. Nevertheless, it tricks the audience into taking a comprehensive world perspective, as experienced by a boy, who “sees everything” instead of “glancing” at it. As a Broadway play, it is full of heart-breaking moments, yet there aren’t many good-souls, who are eager to the aid a young man with “special needs”. That the New York production doesn’t hesitate to show this outright reflection of our society is as much to its credit, as its wonderful technical stage magic.