Dog in Night is a powerful, magical play
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, directed by Lara Macgregorm, The Court Theatre, until April 22 A white stage reveals the innerworkings of a beautiful mind in this flawless piece of modern theatre. The Curious Incident of the Dog
in the Night Time is a cinematic, funny and moving play that finely balances the ambitious with the intimate and the technically dazzling with the naturalistic.
Christopher Boone (Tim Earl) is a 15-year-old boy who is excellent at maths, takes figures of speech literally and becomes extremely upset if he is touched. He perhaps has an autism spectrum condition, although the word autism is not used in the play, and he is instead presented as simply someone with a unique outlook on the world, rather than diagnosed and narrowly defined.
Christopher is stirred into action when he discovers his neighbour’s dog, Wellington, has been killed with a garden fork through the chest. Inspired by his favourite fictional character, Sherlock Holmes, Christopher decides to solve the mystery.
But his detective work leads him to discover shattering truths and forces him to move beyond his carefully ordered world.
The play unfolds on a white floor with black grid lines and a large white backdrop that stretches the whole width and height of the stage.
The large white expanse is used as a projection screen for animations and graphics that transform and animate the space.
The beautifully rendered animations, designed by Andrew Todd, visualise how Christopher views and understands the world. In one particularly effective sequence, the animation dramatically brings to life Christopher’s overwhelming anxiety, struggle and confusion as he attempts to navigate public transport in London. In another scene, the screen animates Christopher’s mind with slowly turning starfields filling the backdrop as he dreams of becoming an astronaut.
The choreography is performed by an animating chorus of cast members that sometimes represent Christopher’s innermonologue and sometimes represent the people he meets.
But director Lara Macgregor also knows when to strip the play down and use the unadorned white space to focus our attention on the characters and emotions of a scene.
The consistently strong cast step up to this challenge, offering delicately observed and naturalistic performances. Earl’s sensitive and realistic portrayal of Christopher is particularly impressive and convincing.
Moments where the technical mastery is stripped away are given a surprising power. In fact, one of the most powerful moments in the play is built around a devastatingly simple, practical and elegant staging choice that requires no digital technology for its emotional punch.
The choreography, performance and digital effects are all subtly deployed to tell the story and offer a privileged glimpse into Christopher’s mind in a cinematic and visual way.
The script also feels cinematic, with a plot that is driven solely by the central character and takes a relentlessly visual approach to characterisation and drama. It is a perfect adaptation of Mark Haddon’s 2003 novel, which always felt like it wanted to burst beyond the page with its diagrams, drawings and mathematical formulas.
The Court Theatre has the budget, expertise and artistic talent to create magic. I sometimes feel that magic is deployed on undeserving shows like the piece of pink fluff that was Legally Blonde. But Dog in the Night Time is a play that harnesses that magic for something profound and beautiful. – Charlie Gates