'The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Night-time'
Gielgud theatre
3rd September 2015, 2:30pm
I know I'm a little late to the party to
be talking about the incident that is the one of a certain dog in the
night time, but unfortunately it wasn't until recently that I got to
see this gem that is Simon Stephens' play adaptation of Mark Haddon's classic novel.
The play tells the story of 15yr old Christopher Boone, an incredibly
intelligent protagonist labelled by the novel's blurb to have Asperger's
syndrome, and thus a few social and personal difficulties. Although the central
plot revolves around Christopher's decision to snap into detective mode
when he finds his neighbour's dog 'Wellington' killed with a garden fork,
the narrative develops in a way which allows us to see peppers of
Christopher's everyday life, and a chance to see things through his eyes.
Telling you that the play was good would be like telling you that
chocolate is delicious: an evidently badly kept secret on the theatre
scene, and probably partly due to my delayed watching of the show.
Nonetheless I will proceed in telling you just why I loved it.
As a slight beginning disclaimer, as is the case with any novel
adaptation, it takes a while for a person (like myself) who's read the book, to
adapt to the story as a visual piece. In the case of 'The Curious Incident...',
adapter Simon Stephens has an even harder job, as the novel takes the form of
almost a stream of consciousness from the perspective of someone who thinks
very differently to your average person. In order to keep the element that it
was from Christopher's perspective, rather than just a story with him
at the centre, there needed to be an element which told us his feelings,
and an air of narration. To overcome this,
Stephens conveys Christopher's thoughts through his councillor
'Siobhan' reading the book that Christopher writes of his thoughts on the
Wellington story. Although a little uncomfortable to hear a woman's voice as
Christopher's thoughts, rather than the actor who played him, you soon became
attuned to the method, and began to thank Stephens for this, especially during
the sensitive parts of the story when we told Christopher's
feelings by an external narrator, allowing the endearing element of the story
to be kept.
I think part of the huge success of the show can be put down to the use
of aesthetics, as throughout, audiences are bombarded with the beautiful and
constant imagery created by not only the ensemble themselves, but the
projection, props, lights and sound effects which aided them. Throughout, I
felt like the stage was a metaphor for Christopher's very orderly mind, perhaps
most significantly achieved through the appearance of the stage which had the
projection of a lined graph on the floor, three walls and ceiling of the
performance area. Through most of the play none of the ensemble (of 10) left
the stage, yet sat quietly at the sides and corners of the space during scenes
in which they weren't needed, springing up and moving at the exact same time
when scenes changed. It felt to me as though they were all in his head, moving
in an orderly mathematical fashion when Christopher wanted them to, yet always
in the back of his mind when he didn't. When things became more complicated in
his life, the stage became more disrupted, with Christopher dashing about the
stage, opening cupboards and cubby holes here, there and everywhere to find
pieces of train tracks which he frantically built during scene changes and long
bits of distressed dialogue. The stage became more and more messy in the same
way that his mind did, and the pinnacle for me was when Christopher found out
the ultimate secret that his mother was actually still alive, and all of her
hidden letters exploded from the ceiling, Kaffe keating (as Christopher)
performing quite the striking fit, along with strobe lighting and the sound
effects of muffled numbers and letters. There were many moments like this where
we were given quite a display for the senses, and if I had any qualms with the
direction it would perhaps be that the (dare I say) overuse of the technical
components perhaps played it safe a little when trying to convey Christopher's
feelings. In some ways it took a little bit of the naturalism away, and I would
have liked to have seen the actors convey things themselves just a touch more
than they did. None the less, 'The Curious Incident...' picked a style and
stuck to it, and throughout my eyes were always indulged. There were even tiny
visual intricacies which didn't go unnoticed, like the fact that 'Mr Shears'
wore a yellow tie, an aspect for me which symbolised the fact that Christopher
disliked him (yellow being his least favourite colour).
Indeed, I think intricacy is the only way to describe every aspect of
the performance, the choreography of the ensemble by Frantic assembly's Scott
Graham, obviously reaching the slick standard which the name suggests it would,
with actors sweeping Keating off of his feet at every opportunity, and of
course in perfect uniform. There was one especially delicious section where
actors performed a 'fast forward' sequence to show time passing, and instead of
going crazy with the exaggerated fast movements that you would expect, they
each perfected the tiny slight gestures of genuine human quirks: itches, hands
in pockets, looking around, flipping pages etc. Possibly one of my favourite
parts to watch as an actor, and definitely something that I will be using
myself when the time comes. I even find myself noticing as I research into the
play further, that it wasn't just on stage that the attention to detail
stopped; 'The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Night-time' also has an
Instagram page, twitter account, and even a soundcloud where you can go and
listen to all of the original music compositions featured in the show. Even in
the auditorium of the Guilgud Theatre, each seat number that was prime had a
special 'Prime Number Seat' poster suck to it to further the idea that the
whole theatre was indeed part of Christopher's mind.It feels to me that The
Curious Incident isn't just a play, but a community which fits nicely in the
centre of London's west end, and one which won't be leaving for some time.
As far as acting goes, I felt some of the strongest work came from
Nicolas Tennant as 'Ed Boone', who I thought carried the dramatic irony of the
piece in a way which was so natural. The truly endearing quality of the novel
is that Christopher doesn't realise how his at times his difficult behavior can
affect people, and I thought Tennant as Christopher's father conveyed the air
of an exasperated but undoubtedly loving father with perfect gruffness. At
starts I thought Kaffe Keating was a rather confident Christopher, playing the
role as though he perhaps knew he was being difficult. Once again however I had
to ween myself off of my interpretation of a more self nervous Christopher from
the novel, and relax into Keating's more knowy, outward approach, which he
conveyed undoubtedly consistently. I think the most perfect moment from Keating
as a protagonist however came at the end, when he tells Siobhan that he thinks
he can do anything, asking her if she thinks so too. The silence in retort, and
black out seemed almost a perfect direction by Marianne Elliott, finishing an
otherwise complex show, with just the simplicity of silence, which I think is
sometimes needed.
http://www.curiousonstage.com/
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