Published on: May 16, 2014
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Olivier Award Winning New Play Comes to Broadway
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a play adapted by Simon Stephens from the novel of the same name by Mark Haddon. During its London premiere run, the play tied the record for winning the most Olivier Awards (seven), including Best New Play at the 2013 Awards ceremony. The hit National Theatre production of Simon Stephens’ The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time has the dates for its Broadway run. The play will begin preview performances September 15 and open October 5 at the Barrymore Theatre.
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 neighbour’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.
Cast
| Alex Sharp Broadway debut |
Christopher Boone | |
| Taylor Trensch at certain performances |
Christopher Boone |
Creative
| Produced by Stuart Thompson and Tim Levy |
| Written by Simon Stephens; Adapted from the novel by Mark Haddon; Incidental music by Adrian Sutton |
| Directed by Marianne Elliott |
| Production Design by Bunny Christie; Lighting Design by Paule Constable; Video Design by Finn Ross; Sound Design by Ian |
Critical Reviews
Matt Wolf of The New York Times noted that the play’s debut was well-timed in relation to the 2012 London Summer Olympics: “its triumphalist spirit tallies exactly with the mood of this summer’s athletic aspirations”.
Ben Brantley, the chief theatre critic of The New York Times, wrote, “As directed by Marianne Elliott, working with an inspired set of designers, Christopher’s maiden voyage into an alien metropolis becomes a virtuoso study in sensory overload. Those lights, noises, street signs, road maps, random words that spell themselves into being, and, oh yes, that moving staircase that materializes out of nowhere: it all keeps coming at you…” Brantley goes on to say that the “extraordinary accomplishment” of the play “is that it forces you to look at the world through Christopher’s order-seeking eyes. In doing so you’re likely to reconsider the dauntless battle your own mind is always waging against the onslaught of stimuli that is life. Scary, isn’t it? Exhilarating too.”
However, Brantley found fault with “having Siobhan (Niamh Cusack), Christopher’s special education teacher, recite the story he has written, presented as a school project. Ms. Cusack does this with a gushy, artificial sense of wonder that you associate with grown-ups talking to small children… Yuck.”
Charles Spencer of The Daily Telegraph explains Siobhan’s role further: “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…”
Like others, Spencer praises Treadaway: “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… thanks to Treadaway’s pained honesty and twitchy awkwardness, as well as his moments of exultant joy, Christopher Boone feels like both a hero and a friend, though the happy ending is rightly qualified.” Spencer also praised Gleason: “There are a host of excellent and often comic supporting performances, with especially fine work from Sean Gleason as the anguished father who loves his son but hurts him terribly, and Niamh Cusack as the kindly teacher.”
Lyn Gardner of The Guardian wrote a rave review:
Simon Stephens’ clever adaptation of Mark Haddon’s bestselling novel about a teenage boy with Asperger’s syndrome is like a cute dog that leaps up and wants to lick you all over. There’s no point in resisting – and there’s no need… The beauty of the evening is magnified by Bunny Christie’s witty design, in which infinite possibilities and multiplying confusions are represented in squares and numbers… There are times when the show comes perilously close to sentimentality, but the clarity of Christopher’s gaze is so unflinching that it often makes you uncomfortable, and the show is equally clear-eyed on the difficulties of parenting, messiness of life, and torment of a child who cannot bear to be touched. The novel gets you inside Christopher’s head, but the stage version does more, giving Christopher’s internal response to the world an external manifestation. That world is often a surreal and scary place, but oddly beautiful and bizarre, too… Leading a fine cast, Luke Treadaway is superb as Christopher, appealing and painful to watch, like the show itself.
Paul Taylor wrote for The Independent:
Simon Stephens’s imaginative adaptation and Marianne Elliott’s brilliant production…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… 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 [this] with an air of narked, impatient genius is to be reminded that Wittgenstein and Beckett are amongst those who have operated on this spectrum.
1. Wolf Matt (7 August 2012). “The National Theatre Hits Its Mark”. The New York Times. Retrieved 2013-04-29.
2. Brantley, Ben (March 13, 2013). “Unnerved, Like All of Us, by Life’s Strangeness: Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time in London”. The New York Times. Retrieved August 20, 2013.
3. Spencer, Charles (13 March 2013). “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Apollo Theatre, review”. The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved August 20, 2013.
4. Gardner, Lyn (13 March 2013). “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – review”. The Guardian (London: Guardian News and Media). Retrieved August 20, 2013.
5. Taylor, Paul (15 March 2013). “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Apollo Theatre, London”. The Independent (London). Retrieved August 20, 2013.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Olivier Award Winning New Play Comes to Broadway
