Curious Incident brought wonderfully to life
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
(out of four) Written by Simon Stephens. Based on the novel by Mark Haddon. Directed by Marianne Elliott. Until November 19 at the Prince of Wales Theatre, 300 King St. W. Mirvish.ca or 416-872-1212. If there’s one thing Brits love to do on the West End, it’s to stage beloved novels — and they do it extremely well.
In 2013, the stage production of Mark Haddon’s bestselling novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time won seven Olivier Awards, tying with 2012’s Matilda the Musical as the most awards for a single production. But that was beaten this year with Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’s nine wins.
With Mirvish Productions’s Matildaclosing this past January and Harry Potter opening on Broadway next year, the Toronto stop on the Curious Incident tour, which officially opened Sunday, is another reminder of the way a book can literally come to life on stage and situate the audience in the middle of it. In this case, into the mind of an autistic 15-year-old boy.
The book famously takes place from the perspective of Christopher Boone (Joshua Jenkins), who gets easily overwhelmed by loud noises and commotion, loves routine, takes conversations literally, cannot be touched, has highly skilled mathematics competencies, hates falseness and can’t ever tell a lie. When he discovers his neighbour’s dog Wellington has been killed, he takes the case on himself and ends up solving another mystery involving his own family, which he chronicles by writing the book himself.
In his adaptation, playwright Simon Stephens places the first act as if the story is being read out by Christopher’s therapist Siobhan (Julie Hale), allowing the action to unfold in person while she narrates the contextual gaps. In the second act, Siobhan has turned Christopher’s book into a school play, though in reality that production wouldn’t have nearly the same technical capabilities as Bunny Christie’s design famously does.
This angle to the staging is particularly effective here, allowing Siobhan to comment on some of the novel’s elements that are most difficult to stage — such as Christopher’s math-solving abilities (we recommend sticking around after the curtain call to get a closer look at that).
But director Marianne Elliott best uses other theatrical elements to get inside Christopher’s head — acutely choreographed movement sequences (by movement directors Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett) can demonstrate the exquisite pleasure of his after-school routine, or the frantic horrors of downtown London that send him (literally) reeling.
Assaults of light and sound begin each act, shocking the audience as if someone had turned on a light without giving Christopher a warning.
The design team — Christie on set, Paule Constable’s lighting, Finn Ross’s videos, Adrian Sutton’s music, and Ian Dickinson’s sound — are responsible for much of the play’s hype, with, in 2012, what was a groundbreaking element of spectacle, while also supporting the play’s themes (simulating graph paper on a math exam, this is Christopher’s weapon of choice on which to draw, project, and communicate his story).
Five years later, some of these techniques might seem commonplace for a particularly ardent theatregoer, but the play also supported multiyear runs on both the West End and Broadway, so the appeal doesn’t seem to fade for new audiences.
Under Elliott’s direction, the design also makes use of one thing that very few plays do — the stage floor. It makes sense, if that’s where this teenage autistic boy spends most of his time looking, the floor is where he sets up a treasured train set, where a mathematical equation unfolds and where he draws his map through London.
In the Princess of Wales Theatre, which features a rather flat lower level, a better choice of seat would be up in the balconies to get the full effect.
The design sets it up, but if we’re really going to believe we’re in Christopher’s world, Joshua Jenkins sells it with a young man who’s pointed, blunt and bold — and a blank stare that would shrink any adult’s misstep (or actor’s, as Jenkins’s Christopher feels no shame about pointing out). But as Christopher misses the intricacies in the emotions of those around him, the audience luckily doesn’t have to.
David Michaels and Emma Beattie are quite effective as Christopher’s parents Ed and Judy, both flawed figures of authority, but pained by the void that exists between their son and themselves — the space that keeps them from understanding Christopher’s mind, and the physical gap that comes from not being able to give their son a hug or hold his hand.
If The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time feels sometimes a bit too conspicuously emotionally manipulative — any live animal on stage will unshakably hook the audience — it gets away with it in its sheer celebration of live theatre as its chosen form.
Elliott’s production proves exactly why his story requires live human beings, on stage and in the audience, with all of their senses on high alert, together, even if the story’s main character wouldn’t stand the artifice of it all.