‘ CURIOUS INCIDENT’ COMPLETELY CHARMS
Some plays communicate primarily through words. Others use movement as a driving language.
Among the many things that makes “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night- Time” so enthralling, as well as so emotionally and intellectually dynamic, is the ingenious ways it blends both forms of communication.
Along the way, it weaves together unexpected ideas about the impact of words, the complexities of mathematics, the perception of inner and outer space and the pathways of an astonishing if unorthodox mind, setting your head spinning in perfect synchronicity with its central character.
This dazzling show, a triumph in London and New York ( where it won the 2015 Tony Award for best play), now in a national touring production at the Oriental Theatre, is the work of British playwright Simon Stephens, adapted from the 2003 best- selling novel by Mark Haddon.
But beforemoving one “left- right turn” further ( to borrow a phrase from the play), praise must be heaped as well on director Marianne Elliott, choreographers Scott Graham ( artistic director of Frantic Assembly, a name that could be a subtitle for “Curious Incident”) and Steven Hoggett ( of “Once” and “BlackWatch” fame) and lighting master Paule Constable. Together, they have conjured, in themost wondrous ways, the sensation of being inside the brain of Christopher Boone, the 15- year- old English boy afflicted with Asperger’s syndrome ( essentially high- functioning autism) who is obsessed with mathematics and truth, as well as his pet rat, Toby.
Theater is a profession that involves the ultimate in artful lying ( and Christopher, the truth addict, wittily quips about this fact). So there is a lovely and playful irony in the fact that what we are ostensibly watching here is a play created from the journal/ book he kept about a multifaceted breakthrough period in his adolescence.
It begins when Christopher ( played on opening night by Adam Langdon, a 2015 graduate of the Juilliard School, who alternates in the ferociously demanding role with Benjamin Wheel-wright) is distraught to discover the brutally murdered corpse of Wellington, the dog owned by his neighbor, Mrs. Shears. Hellbent on discovering who committed this atrocity, he decides to play detective and is driven to do something he rarely does—“chat” with people. In the process, he will discover a great deal more than he bargained for.
Christopher lives in the town of Swindon in southwest England, sharing a house with his father, Ed ( Gene Gillette), an engineer and repairman who loves him and tries desperately to communicate with him but also lies to him. The chief lie concerns the whereabouts of Christopher’s mother Judy ( Felicity Jones Latta), a young beauty who left him in part because Christopher was too much for her to handle. Without giving away too much, that is not at all the story Ed has told his son.
It is Christopher’s search for his mother that animates a good part of the play, with his thrilling and audacious first venture into the world a trip to London, taken alone. That trip is transformed into a wildly sensory fantasia that viscerally captures how Christopher experiences the world and is almost undone by all the dissonance that most people inhabiting a contemporary urban landscape ( with trains, subways, flashing signs, ticket- dispensing machines, big noise and huge crowds) manage to absorb.
The real “mapping” done here is the mapping of Christopher’s brain, and it is suggested through movement, through Constable’s lighting and the grid- like set of Bunny Christie, the video design of Finn Ross, the music of Adrian Sutton and the sound design by Ian Dickinson for Autograph.
Langdon— tall, solidly built and graceful in just the right nerdy, off- kilter way— gives a performance of great clarity, self- awareness and quicksilver emotional shifts. You ache for him and root for him, as does his teacher/ mentor Siobhan ( a warm and very real performance by Maria Elena Ramirez).
Gillette, who has a touch of Sting about him, deftly suggests the need to protect both his son and himself from more pain, while Latta skillfully captures the warring impulses of a dissatisfied romantic and despairing, guilty mother.
Amelia White is most winning as Mrs. Alexander, the elderly neighbor who somehow manages to make a connection with Christopher ( even if only to learn he wants his cake with pink, not yellow icing). And the ensemble “dances” skillfully through many of the scenes in this moving story about the tense network that connects ( or disconnects) the heart and the mind.
NOTE: Whether you are a math wonk or not, count on staying in the theater following the curtain calls, as the actor playing Christopher returns to the stage for a rapid- fire “performance” of the proof for a right triangle that wins him a gold star on his A- Level exam. Even if you don’t understand most of it, it serves as its own proof of the poetic beauty of both mathematics and stagecraft, as well as the bravura acting skills of the actor playing this role.