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THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME
Based on the novel by Mark Haddon
Adapted by Simon Stephens

Venue RNT (Cottesloe)
via feed to
Leighton Buzzard Theatre
2014
Directed by Marianne Elliott



Cast
Christopher John Francis Boone
15-year old maths-genius detective
Luke Treadaway
Ed Boone  Father Paul Ritter
Judy Boone Mother Nicola Walker
Siobhan  School mentor Niamh Cusack
Mrs Alexander Neighbour Una Stubbs
With Howard Ward; Matthew Barker etc


Reviews

Telegraph

Like many other readers, I was blown away by the originality, humour and compassionate insight of Mark Haddon’s novel about a teenage boy with Asperger’s Syndrome. Haddon in fact dislikes the Asperger’s tag that appeared on the cover of his book when it was first published, and prefers Christopher Boone’s own description of himself as “someone who has Behavioural Problems.” When I heard that Simon Stephens was going to turn this unusual novel into a play at the National Theatre, I feared he in turn would be floored by “adaptation” problems, but in fact the show proved a big hit.

The show manages to be theatrical while remaining entirely true to the spirit of the book. The dramatic conceit is that Christopher’s warm-hearted teacher at his special needs school, reads the book he writes about his attempts to solve the mystery of a dog that was brutally killed in a neighbour’s garden, and decides to stage it as a play. That may sound cumbersome but it works superbly and the production’s mixture of narrative and acted scenes often put me in mind of the RSC’s gloriously inventive production of Nicholas Nickleby which also featured a troubled child, Smike.

What makes the production even more special is Luke Treadaway’s astonishing performance as the 15-year old Christopher. He is unbearably poignant in moments of distress when he kneels with his face on the ground and moans, but also movingly captures the character’s courage, his brilliance at mathematics, and his startling perspectives on the world. His character can’t bear to be touched - he only allows the most fleeting physical contact with his parents, in which upraised palms briefly connect - and he has a host of other quirks, enthusiasm and dislikes.

*   *   *   *   *

Guardian

It doesn't matter a damn what I or my colleagues say about this adaptation of Mark Haddon's bestselling novel. Last night it was greeted with a great roar of approval. And, even though I found myself resisting occasional touches of self-conscious cuteness and sentimentality in Marianne Elliott's production, I readily acknowledge the whole thing is done with enormous flair.

Playwright Simon Stephens, for a start, solves the problem confronting any adapter. First he has a teacher (Niamh Cusack) reading aloud the story that 15-year-old Christopher Boone has fashioned from his Holmes-like investigation into the killer of his neighbour's dog; then, against Christopher's wishes, the novel is turned into a play. This not only frames the action, but also sets up a rich tension between fiction's invention and the obsession with facts, forensics and systemised data that is a symptom of Christopher's autism. His mathematical mind is also brilliantly reflected in Bunny Christie's design of glowing geometric grids, and in Paule Constable's lighting, which conveys the hero's love of the night sky.

A remarkable performance from Luke Treadaway captures all the hero's zeal, obduracy and terror of tactile contact, and pins down behavioural qualities all of us, at some point, see in ourselves. The movement direction, from Frantic Assembly's Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett, also conveys Christopher's confusion when confronted by the bustle of London life. I flinch from manipulative touches such as miniaturised trains and a live dog: two things calculated to send audiences into swooning raptures. But this is a highly skilful adaptation, and Paul Ritter and Nicola Walker as Christopher's parents movingly remind us of the messily contradictory human emotions that co-exist with their son's world of perfect patterns

*   *   *   *   *

Independent

The Curious Incident is no easy book to adapt, given the particular nature of the fifteen-year-old protagonist, Christopher Boone,“a mathematician with some behavioural difficulties” who is on the autism spectrum, and given that the story is told in the first person. But Simon Stephens's imaginative adaptation and Marianne Elliott's brilliant production find solutions that actually manage to throw fresh and arresting light on the material while keeping a perfect equipoise between the comedy and the heartache.

And I do not see how Luke Treadaway's phenomenal performance could be bettered. He seems to inhabit, with every twitchy atom of his being, this isolated boy whose detective work about a dead dog digs up less categorizable secrets about his parents' marriage and the wider community. His lower lip juts in a pout that combines stubborn determination and a neediness that he is not built to register. He talks in a slightly accusatory and officious blurt as if he knows that his meaning will have to barge through several layers of prejudice to be heard. Even his agitatedly methodical movements are as a mass of straight lines, like his thoughts, as when he perceives with uncluttered immediacy that the word “metaphor” is itself a metaphor. To hear Treadaway deliver perceptions like with an air of narked, impatient genius is to be reminded that Wittgenstein and Beckett are amongst those who have operated on this spectrum.

In a simple, but highly effective stroke, the story is mainly told by his sympathetic teacher (beautifully played by Niamh Cusack). Meanwhile, Bunny Christie's huge black-graph-paper box of a set becomes both a free-form arena for the action and the vessel for trying to get inside the synaptic overload of Christopher's mind, as it blizzards, say, with upwardly floating movements or when the view through a railway carriage window speeds up to thin whizzing strip of white like a mad heart scan.  And none of this feels voyeuristic because, crucially, in the course of the proceedings we come to realise that Christopher is not a case study but, in some respects, a heightened metaphor for the outsider in each of us.
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