The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime

review by Katelynn Banville

March 8^th, 2017

The play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time adapted by Simon Stephens based on the novel by Mark Haddon, was incredibly produced and performed. Between the staging and the incredible acting this play deserves high praise. If you want to see something truly mesmerizing this is the play for you.

The cast of this play was a part that truly made it as great as it was. Their constant accents and believable emotions they expressed made it seem like it was real life. The actor playing the main character Christopher Boone who was an autistic child, stuck to his rhythm of speech the entire play which strengthened his character tremendously. His acting allowed the audience to have a glimpse into his mind and life. When he entered the train station he made himself appear smaller and afraid. The staging behind him displayed words like no smoking and different lines for the trains and all these commercial headlines. They were flashing repeatedly over each other in bold font with a voice over saying the words making you become totally overwhelmed trying to follow what was going on. This was representing what was going on in his mind.

            When you first walk in you will definitely have lots of questions about the stage. The dark grey seemingly blank walls with white borders seem like kind of a blank and boring stage but this is far from the truth. The whole stage had the capability of lighting up which truly brought the play to life. They optimized this stage to show things like houses or location instead of just having the physical walls of a home be slid on stage. There were panels that slide to the side allowing the actors to exit the stage un-noticeably and cabinets behind panels allowing Christopher to get out things like pieces of train sets. This gave the play a whole different feel and wasn’t distracting from what was happening. They often would attempt to over stimulate the audience by having all these words flashing and making noise to try to represent what was going through the boy’s head to give some sort of relation to his struggle. This allows the audience to be able to have an even greater look into the character’s life and feelings.

            The play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time performed at the Boston Opera house is truly a must-see play.