“I Do Not Tell Lies.”

review by Mark Bedetti

3/8/17

White lights strobed onto the corpse of Mrs. Shears’ poodle, Wellington, with a garden fork protruding from it’s side. A massive cube that makes up the stage at Boston Opera House is covered with giant graph paper and outlined with smaller colorful cubes. White stage boxes are scattered across the stage each numbered for there own specific reason. An anxious and unsure boy is frozen over the tan poodle clutching onto his brown curly hair. This is what the opening scene of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time may look like when we first meet Christopher, the main character. Christopher is a fifteen-year-old boy who has extraordinary talents in math and science living in Swindon, England. The majority of the beginning of the show talks about his attempt on finding out who murdered the dog Wellington. Cristopher’s father tells him that his mother is dead but after further investigation, he finds out that there is something fishier going on that his father is not telling him. Christopher’s journey discovering the mystery beyond the death of Wellington is seen as the play progresses.

Although the set was one of the most elaborate elements of the play, it was fairly straightforward when it cam to the actual physical elements on the stage. The stage boxes covering the floor had multiple uses and were constantly being moved. In many situations, the boxes along with the lighting were used to create completely different locations that although they were not actually in a specific location, the audience could use their imagination to fill in the rest. One example of this was a train scene in act two where moving images created the allusion of train windows which was complemented by the sound effects. At times, the combination of the lighting, special effects, and sound was almost overwhelming to the viewer. However, this only contributed to affect of full immersion from the point of view of Christopher.

Telling the story in the point of view of a fifteen-year-old autistic boy going through family problems on top of his own internal conflict is not an easy story to tell. One example where the audience could really tell what was going on in his mind was a scene when Cristopher was in the train station. For most, the train station is a confusing place already, never mind if you have a disability. Lights were flashed to show intensity, projections showed large, intimidating words of what he might be hearing, and this was all added to by the acting played by Christopher’s role.

            Another aspect of this show that really made it worthwhile was how believable it was to the viewer. There did not need to be any more effects added as there was quite a bit of area left where the viewer could imagine and fill it in with there own mind. In the first act of the play, Christopher dreams about being an astronaut. The stage crew comes on and caries him around stage as if he were flying in zero gravity. Although the audience could tell that he was clearly not in space, the viewers were able to fully understand what was going on and still getting a great show out of it.

            It was not just one of the acting, design, directing, or the play itself that made it a wonderful piece but rather a combination of all of them. Each of these pieces built off of each other and without one of them, the show would not piece together into the beautiful puzzle it was.