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Theatre Review: “The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time” Is A Mind-Expanding, Emotional Roller Coaster

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This Tony award-wining masterpiece is based on the novel by Mark Haddon and performed from the play written by Simon Stephens. The performing company that graces the Winspear Opera House features both Adam Langdom and Benjamin Wheelwrite in the lead role of Christopher. The role is double cast due to the intense and demanding physicalities of the part. The show I attended featured Langdom.

The show is presented on a practically bare stage relying almost entirely on lighting special effects to dress the stage and help tell the story. A cast of 7 main and primary supporting characters tell the story with an ensemble of 8 actors filling in multiple small rolls and responsible for bringing Christopher’s thoughts to life. It is possible to believe that everyone on the stage are simply small microbes of Christopher’s brain as he tells the story. The lighting, sound, projection, and music are also supporting characters from inside Christopher’s brain that help tell the story as much, if not more so, than any dialogue or choreography.

“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time” takes place in the year 1998 in and around the town of Swindon, England. The fifteen year-old narrator of the story, Christopher John Francis Boone, discovers the slain body of his neighbor’s poodle, Wellington, on the neighbor’s front lawn one evening and sets out to uncover the murderer. His investigation is at times aided, and at other times hampered, by his unique perspective of the world.

It would be very easy to label Christopher and try and put him into a small diagnosed box. However, as discussed at a post-production roundtable with director Marianne Elliot, it was crucial to not put any labels on what made Christopher the way he was, but rather to open our minds to who the whole person of Christopher was and not just a small incomplete label.

As mentioned above, when you walk into the theater, the stage is a bare black and white grid. The floor, the walls and the ceiling are all comprised of a white grid on a black back ground. It originally appears blank and empty. Howwver, there are dozens of trap doors and hidden cupboards that are there to produce whatever Christopher needs at a moment’s notice to continue telling his story.

Wherever Christopher needs the story to go, that’s where it goes. The stage becomes whatever room he needs it to be seamlessly and without any need for set changes. It simply morphs as required. Almost as if the set is alive.

Along with the ever changing “set” to tell his story, Christopher is also able to use the walls and ceiling as easily as the floor. With the help of the ensemble, Christopher need not worry about the laws of physics or gravity. Due to this extraordinary choreography, the show was the first non-musical play to receive a nomination for Best Choreography at the Tony Awards in over 50 years.

As Christopher tells his story and writes his book about the mysteries he is working on, the audience is not only completely enveloped in Christopher’s brain, but how the people around him think, love and live.

A sincere bravo to the brilliant job done physically and mentally by Langdom in bringing Christopher to life, but an equal amount of recognition must be showered on the entire cast. For the first time in over 30 years of theatre experience, can I truly say that the entire cast worked together as one. It would be impossible to say that one actor was more important or one performance was stronger than another, as it would be to say that a part of my body was less important that the rest. They all worked so harmoniously that it’s easy to see why “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” is sweeping the nation with rave reviews.

When going to see this show, keep an open mind, heart, and stay alert to subtle changes and inflections from the actors and the set….and stay past curtain call. For goodness sake, PLEASE don’t leave until well after curtain call. Like with most Disney•Pixar animated features, there is a surprise ending to this remarkable show, but one of the most extraordinary and remarkable characters I have seen to date. Christopher has left me believing that all things are possible, regardless of how stacked the deck is against me. Inspirational, energizing and mind expanding.

Now playing at the Winspear Opera House in Dallas thru January 22

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