the curious incident review

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime

       During this fall season, I am honored to play a role in the amazing play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, which is based on the book written by Mark Haddon and adapted into a play by Simon Stephens. This plays discussed a story happens around Christopher (acted by Amelia) who is a teenager boy with autism. One day, Christopher discovers that his neighbour’s, Mrs Shears, dog has been murdered, and during the process of finding who murdered the dog, he finds the truth that her mother has left he and his father has murdered the dog and has lied to him the whole time. The adventure of Christopher is tough and the conflict between he and his family are intense, but it also shows the deepest and most powerful connection between people which is love.

        The setting of the show in total is very simple, we used minimum amount of props and setting changes as we can in order to keep the flow of the play tight and thus encourage audiences’ engagement. At the beginning of play and throughout the play, we incorporated scenes that people walking around Christopher with different paces and gestures, and this directly represents how chaotic it is inside Christopher’s mind and how other people seems interruptive and confusing to him. Also, the blue lights that surround the stage and frame a rectangle contributes to the creation of Christopher’s world because in his mind, there are only right and wrong and everything are ordered and rational. The walking and confined stage remind me of the viewpoints that we did in class: the walking is about the tempo and high tempo shows more intense chaos while creating tension, and the rectangle stage is like the grids we did in class for exercise, and having gone viewpoints before really helps me to understand the meanings of the choices better. Another interesting director choice is that we put all the actors on both sides of the stage which firstly, reduce the time of scene change and furthermore creates a sense that Christopher is always “surrounded” by people because of his “abnormal” behaviors which represents his insecurity and uneasiness. But the choice has to be cautious as well because it’s easy for the audience to be distracted if the actors on the sides are changing clothes or fidgeting. 

        Because we were discussing moment work in the class before, I found that there are actually a lot of amazing moments that are incorporated in the show. One is when Christopher is recalling the beach moment with his mother while Ed discovering Christopher’s book. We divided the stage into three sections: Ed is on the stage right, reading the book, Judy is walking from upstage to downstage in the center, and Christopher and Shobian are having a conversation on the stage left. The division of the stage clearly shows that every moment is happening at different times and the change between each moment also involves the lighting change and sound change. When Judy is on the beach, the lighting is blue and there is beach music which creates a flowy and relaxing atmosphere and builds Judy’s character that she is dreamy and enjoy living in the fantasy, foreshadowing her choice of living her family to pursue a more carefree life. Also, we layered and ordered the moments at the same time, Judy came out when Christopher is describing her which is moment layering and they froze when Ed is reading the letter which is moment ordering. The combination of different approaches represents a contrast between reality and illusion which is emphasized a lot throughout the play. In Act 2, after Christopher left home, he always finds that Ed and Shobian talking to him. In order to distinguish his imagination to reality, we put dim wash spotlight on Ed and Shobian and bright full stage light when it is reality so that the audience can see the difference explicitly. 

       Acting as Judy, the most memorable moment I remembered is the interaction with Shobian when she is reading the letter. Judy and Shobian actually have an interesting dynamic between themselves because Shobian is the ideal mother figure for Christopher while Judy is the real mother. So when Shobian is reading the letter she is actually mad at Judy because she left Christopher, and Judy is trying to find excuses for herself and explain that she loves Christopher. We decided to let Christopher sit in the center stage, setting the train set and Judy and Shobian circling around him while speaking. The spatial relationship between Judy and Shobian really contributes to showing the dynamics, Judy is chasing Shobian because she wants to explain herself while Shobian wants to blame Judy so she goes after Judy which leads to the circling. Also, the level between Judy, Shobian and Christopher is also noticeable. Judy and Shobian are standing while Christopher is sitting which shows that they are posing their thoughts on Christopher because both of them have their own opinions towards the whole thing, but at the end, Judy sits next to Christopher which shows the reconciliation between them and explains the determination of Christopher of going to find his mother.

       The show is really intense in general, but I think it’s a great thing to present such an emotional and powerful play because it really strikes people and enables us to reflect and cherish the relationships we had. Also, all of my friends are impressed by the actors because they have deep understandings about the roles they played and are in character so well that allows the audience to be part of the story instead of just watching they performing.