Theatre Review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Thrilling.  Simply one of the very best plays and productions I have ever seen.  First of all, you can give this production the Tony Awards today for Set Design, Lighting Design, Sound Design, Best Play and Best Direction.  And possibly Best Choreography.  Why wait until June?  A young actor named Alex Sharp played the leading role of Christopher Boone and was on stage for every minute of this almost 3 hour play.  He gave a brilliant and sensitive performance, mesmerizing and charismatic.  The entire cast was excellent (Francesca Faridany as Christopher's teacher, Ian Barford as the father, Enid Graham as the mother, Helen

Carey as the neighbor).  It was true in every detail to Mark Haddon's terrific novel. The geometrically designed boxed stage was a representation of the confines of Christopher's world and his mind.  The story and play are told in the first person - from the perspective of a 15-year old with Asperger's Syndrome, mildly functional autism, Haphephobia and Savant Syndrome.  One minor change from the novel was the way the play ended.  In the novel Christopher concludes that despite his behavioral oddities, he succeeded in solving the mystery of who killed the dog, Wellington, traveled on his own to London, passed

his A-levels with honors at age 15, found his mother and was very brave.  So he concludes to the reader that his future held the promise that he can accomplish anything he wants.  But in the play he poses this question to his teacher and looks to her for affirmation.  "I can do anything, right?" he asks her.  She is silent.  He asks again.  She remains silent unable to answer him.  Christopher's life is all about truth.  He is incapable of lying to anyone.  He loves mathematics because a valid mathematical theorum has a solution that can only be true if validated.  But life itself is cruel, full of unexpected and often disappointing surprises and unfairnesses. The teacher remains silent because she does not want Christopher to know this now.  A compelling ending for a fine drama.  This play is a "must see".

One exceptionally clever innovation in the drama was when the actress Francesca Faridany as the teacher, Siobhan, left character to address Christopher as an actor rather than as a character.  If you have read the novel you are familiar with many passages 

where Christopher explains how he uses mathematic formulae to arrive at puzzle solving conclusions.  In a scene where Christopher is seated at a school desk taking his A-level exam in mathematics he speaks aloud that he knows the answer to a test question and begins to explain to the audience how he would arrive at that answer.  Siobhan stops him and points to the audience pleading with Christopher to stop his explanation.  "They don't really care how you arrived at your answer.  You will bore them." she tells him.  "Just answer the question and move on."  Christopher is shocked.  She further explains, to placate him, that if the audience wants to hear how he derived the answer to this math question those audience members can stay in the theatre after the curtain call and Christopher can explain it to them.  Christopher seemed satisfied with this

solution.  Well, after the curtain calls (a standing ovation), and after the house lights came back up and as the audience started to leave, Alex Sharp, still in character as Christopher, ran back out to the stage front and center and started to talk about the math problem.  He offered to answer any math questions the audience might have.  It was a very funny and touching moment and nobody wanted to leave the theatre.  The entire audience had connected with this young actor and his character and it would have been rude to leave then and there.  Give Alex Sharp the Best Actor Tony today.  Why wait until June?