Susan Granger’s review of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” (Barrymore Theatre)
This British import is the most exciting, innovative theater to arrive on Broadway on a long, long time. Life-affirming, it not only touches the heart and but also provokes the mind, a rare combination.
Adapted by Simon Stephens from Mark Haddon’s 2003 best-seller of the same name, it revolves around Christopher Boone (Alex Sharp), an inquisitive 15 year-old boy who discovers the corpse of Wellington, a neighbor’s dog, with a pitchfork stuck into it. Clearly on the autistic spectrum but highly gifted in math, logic and ethics, Christopher sets out to investigate whodunit, even though his father warns him not to stick his nose into other people’s business. His persistent inquiries get him into trouble with the police and lead him on a scary, bewildering trip from suburbia into metropolitan London.
Structured in a series of monologues, it’s propelled by Alex Sharp’s sympathetic and extraordinarily energetic performance. He is on-stage the entire time; a 25 year-old recent Julliard graduate, Sharp makes a brilliant Broadway debut. Supporting him are Francesca Faridany, as his helpful special needs teacher; Ian Barford, as his father; and Enid Graham, as his mother.
With dazzling technical expertise, director Marianne Elliott (“War Horse”) taps into the essence of minimalism to stimulate the imagination, along with a dazzling array of lighting, scenic, music and projection designers and choreographers. The stage is surrounded by walls of black squares divided by white lines into boxes, like vaults in cemetery mausoleum. Within them, doors suddenly appear, along with drawers containing props. Strobe lights flicker and, at one point, confetti falls from the ceiling. Inventive and meticulously detailed, at times it feels like sensory overload – which is exactly what goes on inside Christopher’s brain. It’s emotionally enveloping and quite spectacular.
And FYI: the title comes from a Sherlock Holmes mystery.