After conquering the Olivier Awards earlier this week – scooping seven statuettes, more than any other play in Olivier Award history – and having already dominated the media with a run of euphoric reviews, few could refute that ‘Curious Incident…’ carries the mantel of being one of the most inspiring productions to be staged by the National Theatre in many years.
Based on the book by Mark Haddon, and adapted for stage by Simon Stephens, Curious Incident… features an unlikely hero in Christopher Boone, a 15-year-old boy with a brilliant mind that finds the illogical conventions of a chaotic world challenging to his pragmatic mind. Although his medical condition is never named, many commentators have likened it to Asperger syndrome, high functioning autism or even savant syndrome.
Living with a father that struggles to connect with him, a series of events are triggered when the neighbour’s dog is found dead, killed by a garden fork, which leads to Christopher fleeing his home town of Swindon in search of his mother.
Where Curious Incident… excels is in its ingenious use of effortlessly blending staging, lighting, sound, dance, costume and script to create a whirlwind of emotion and action, punctuated by more delicate moments, mostly focused around Christopher. It’s theatre at its emotionally-charged best.
At times the production borders close to reveling too much in its cleverness, such as in the scene in which Christopher arrives in a bustling, noisy, crazy London, almost delving too much into style over story progression, but just when you feel perhaps it’s being too showy, it reels us back in, keeping us mentally engaged enough without shutting us off through its sheer energy.
We feel very little for the other characters here, many of which seem cold and heartless to Christopher’s needs, allowing their own selfish desires to come before his. His mother is perhaps the only person that marginally evokes any genuine love towards her son, as she desperately attempts to reconcile her own guilty feelings of abandoning her child for a life in London with an impatient lover.
This is an intimate story that has been given the grand spectacle that London’s West End dictates, yet without losing any of its heart. As a shining example of why our city is leading the world when it comes to theatre, Curious Incident… is very much the benchmark that all future productions should be measured by.
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
• Apollo Theatre, 31 Shaftesbury Avenue, W1D 7EZ
