The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime Parent Review
Unlike most of united states of america lazy mortals, Christopher sees everything. And in The Curious Incident of the Domestic dog in the Dark-Time, now playing at the Kennedy Center, nosotros see the world through his unique perspective – brought unforgettably to life with dazzling stage and lighting that is nothing brusk of virtuosic.
Adapted past Simon Stephens from Mark Haddon's 2003 novel of the same proper noun, the Tony-laurels winning accommodation of Incident tells the story of a British teenager (Adam Langdon) with Asperger Southward yndrome living outside London with his father (Gene Gillette) in the backwash of what we learn was seemingly a family tragedy. Gillette has found himself as a single parent, left to struggle with connecting with a most unusual son.
Christopher struggles with many of the most quotidian elements of daily life, such as making minor talk with his classmates and picking up on social cues. Unable to tolerate even being touched lest he break downwards into a fit, Christopher prefers to spend his fourth dimension mostly locked away in the globe he has created for himself in his room. With an innate souvenir for numbers, he is preparing to accept his math A-levels as the youngest pupil to do so at his school. (He refers to his classmates every bit "stupid" with his own particular brand of tact.)
Math offers a refuge – a place where patterns can hands be detected and a "right" solution can exist plant. Christopher seeks to apply the same type of patterns to his cluttered abode life, a search that sets the plot in action when he stumbles upon the decease of his neighbour's domestic dog, Wellington. Christopher dons his detective'southward hat (the story's title derived from a Sherlock Holmes story) in an obsessive mission to identify the culprit – a quest that ultimately sends him out on a journey into the perils of the wider world and London, where he finds challenges in applying his mathematical tool kit to solving problems involving other human being beings.
Langdon is compelling equally Christopher, fully dominating the stage with a memorable persona, admitting one of a character that can be a bit overwhelming to spend two and a half hours with at times. There are also especially strong performances from Gillette and Maria Elena Ramirez, every bit a teacher who encourages Christopher's gift for storytelling as he narrates his odyssey.
Some of the pleasures of Haddon's novel were the lengths it adopted to place the reader in such a unique vantage betoken, with capacity numbered by prime numbers, for case, rather than successive. The theatrical version takes the immersion to the next level, with the phase itself as arguably the true breakout star. Under the direction of Marianne Elliot and the lighting blueprint of Paule Lawman, Christopher'due south internal hopes and fears are brought to with a high-tech set and lighting wizardry. They must be seen to be fully appreciated.
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closes Oct 23, 2016
Details and tickets
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Numbers and patterns announced and reappear in strange motifs in the background. The chorus of voices in Christopher's head is manifested in a shadowy line-up of performers, with a terrifying onslaught of strobe lights bathing the audience as Christopher's journey takes nighttime turns. Theater lovers will be reminded of the enormous imaginative capacity that the medium holds for telling stories in ways that can feel almost cinematic.
Less successful are a number of self-referential winks breaking the third wall to acknowledge that Christopher'southward story is a production on stage. I establish these to hold no clear purpose beyond generating some piece of cake chuckles. The production did elevate a flake for this viewer, clocking in at quite a generous running length for a relatively intimate story. I suspect that a few of the vignettes establishing Christopher's estrangement and attempts to detect a place in the world could take been streamlined a fleck in the original script.
The source novel has been criticized in contempo years for its depiction of Asperger'due south, with Haddon conceding that he conducted relatively limited research on the status. The truth is that Christopher'due south character rouses our empathy less considering he has a disability and more because he is an outsider – a status that all of u.s. can chronicle to at one point or another. The ability of Incident is the innovative and imaginary means that it employs to prove us the world from an unusual perspective – and remind us that we are all straining to discover patterns and meaning in anarchy.
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime-Time by Simon Stephens. Based on the novel by Mark Haddon. Directed past Marianne Elliott. Cast: Adam Langdon, Benjamin Wheelwright, Maria Elena Ramirez, Gene Gillette, Felicity Jones Latta, Amelia White, Kathy McCafferty, John Hemphil, Brian Robert Burns, Francesca Choy-Kee, Geoffrey Wade, Josephine Hall, Robyn Kerr, Tim McKiernan, J. Paul Nicholas, Tim Wright.Lighting design past Paule Constable. National bout presented past The Kennedy Heart. Reviewed by Daron Christopher
Source: https://dctheatrescene.com/2016/10/10/curious-incident-dog-night-time-kennedy-center-review/
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