The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Opening Night: October 5, 2014
Closing: September 4, 2016
Theater: Ethel Barrymore Theater
Fifteen-year old Christopher has an extraordinary brain; he is exceptionally intelligent but ill-equipped to interpret everyday life. When he falls under suspicion for killing his neighbor’s dog, he sets out to identify the true culprit, which leads to an earth-shattering discovery and a journey that will change his life forever.
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October 5, 2014
Ever had one of those days in the city when you feel like you forgot to put your skin on? Sure you have. It happens when you haven’t slept, or you drank too much the night before, or you’ve been brooding over bad news. All your senses, it seems, have been heightened to a painful acuity; your nerve endings are standing on guard. And every one of the manifold sights and sounds of urban life registers as a personal assault. You’re a walking target in a war zone, and that subway ride that awaits you looms like a descent into hell. Such a state of being is conjured with dazzling effectiveness in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which opened on Sunday night at the Ethel Barrymore Theater. Adapted by Simon Stephens from Mark Haddon’s best-selling 2003 novel about an autistic boy’s coming-of-age, this is one of the most fully immersive works ever to wallop Broadway. So be prepared to have all your emotional and sensory buttons pushed, including a few you may have not known existed. As directed by Marianne Elliott (a Tony winner for the genius tear-jerker War Horse), with a production that retunes the way you see and hear, Curious Incident can be shamelessly manipulative.
READ THE REVIEWOctober 5, 2014
Bow-wowza! To crack the case of a murdered mutt, a boy goes on a remarkable journey in the eloquently theatrical and deeply touching adaptation of Mark Haddon’s 2003 novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Set in and around London, the story is about family, pain and discovery — and the show’s best find is Alex Sharp, a recent Juilliard grad. He dazzles as bright as the high-wattage effects with a physical and emotionally intense star turn. Sharp plays Christopher Boone, a 15-year-old who’s a whiz at math but locked up socially due to a condition like Asperger’s syndrome. Chris can’t be touched, hates the color yellow and can’t decipher figurative language or feelings. The action begins as Chris vows to solve a mystery: Who stabbed a neighbor’s pet with a pitchfork? Detective work leads him to a personal puzzle: What happened to my mom? Unsettling truths surface about his flawed, all-too-human mother (Enid Graham) and father (Ian Barford).
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October 5, 2014
Direct from sell-out London runs at the National Theatre and in the West End, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time crosses the Atlantic to Broadway with a boatload of deserved acclaim and awards, both for Mark Haddon’s novel and for playwright Simon Stephens’ and director Marianne Elliott’s kinetically re-imagined stage adaptation. On its surface, this is a murder mystery in which a boy with behavioral difficulties casts himself as the sleuth. But that pretext is merely the jumping-off point for a complex reflection on truth, on the ways in which we look at the world — from wonder to incomprehension to terror — and on the magic of theatrical storytelling. Has Stephens written a play for the ages here? Difficult to say. Text and production work in such seamless symbiosis that it’s impossible to imagine one existing without the other. While no name is given to the exact nature of the disorder suffered by 15-year-old Christopher Boone (Alex Sharp), his high-functioning autism appears to be Asperger’s syndrome. And that condition informs every aspect of the telling and physical staging of this relatively simple story of an outsider struggling to understand the breakdown of everything that’s familiar and comforting to him.
READ THE REVIEWOctober 5, 2014
A boy reaches out to pet a neighbor’s dog. It sounds so cozy, except the dog onstage that begins the Broadway production of the National Theatre’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time has just been murdered with a giant garden pitchfork. Aside from that grisly initial image, the New York production of the multiple Olivier Award-winner that opened Sunday night at the Barrymore Theatre evolves into a charming, intricately choreographed and dynamic theatrical experience. The play is based on Simon’s Stephens’ adaptation of Mark Haddon’s best-selling, 2003 novel; both look at the world through the eyes of a smart yet very challenged teenager with an unspecified condition very like Asperger’s syndrome.
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October 5, 2014
Despite the Sherlock-derived title and gruesome crime scene it opens with, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time solves the case relatively quickly. By the end of the first act we know whodunit (that is, impaled a pooch with a pitchfork) and we’ve gotten another revelation, this one having to do with the hero’s mother. But there’s a broader mystery raised by this dazzling and pulse-pounding drama: “How on earth did they do that?” By “that,” we mean how the British import translates Mark Haddon’s tricky 2003 novel—narrated by a 15-year-old boy who’s clearly on the autism spectrum—to the stage. Christopher John Francis Boone (Sharp) is a math savant with a fondness for the color red, who has difficulty interacting with people—he screams if you touch him. The strain of raising such a gifted but challenged child shows on his well-meaning but anger-prone father (Ian Barford), who one day informs the impassive boy that his mother had died. Later, Christopher finds the neighbor’s dog murdered, and decides to catch the killer. His journey leads him to London and into a sense-barraging sequence on the Underground.
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