EDITOR: Auckland Theatre Company’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time has completely sold out its run at the Q theatre, which is a remarkable achievement for the company. This follows their run of To Kill a Mockingbird at the Civic Theatre earlier in the year, which was their most successful drama, beating the record for their 12 Angry Men set way back in 1998. It bodes well for the opening of the much larger waterfront theatre in October. Nathan Joe reviewed Curious for Theatre Scenes, and I also wrote on it for Metro Magazine. Matt Baker was also moved to record an alternative perspective on ATC’s production. This is an unsolicited review.

Adaptation is the key to survival. When a playwright decides to adapt a literary success, one hopes that it is due to the fact that they see a theatricality inherent in the work that such an adaptation could draw upon and engage with in an original way due to the new medium. Earlier this year, Auckland Theatre Company had a record-breaker in ticket sales with their production of Christopher Sergel’s theatrical adaptation of Harper Lee’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird (though box office records were not specified as being either numerical or statistical when noting the season’s length and comparing the house size of The Maidment to The Civic). Regardless, financial fortune does not insinuate artistic accomplishment. While Simon Stephens’ stage adaptation of Mark Haddon’s novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time suffers from the same fundamental problem as To Kill A Mockingbird – that the dramatic narrative structure of literary prose is not the same as the dramatic narrative structure of theatrical plot – Curious compensates by providing theatricality at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Winner of seven Laurence Olivier Awards and five Tony Awards, not one of these was for the script, which remains more or less identical in textual composition to the book, yet six were for production qualities (lighting, set, sound, and projection). [More] 

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With Silo’s Medea and the return season of The Book of Everything,2016 has been a good year for young characters on the big stage, proving that the universality of stories is dependent not on subject matter but execution. Adding to the mix is Auckland Theatre Company’s long-awaited production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, based on Mark Haddon’s novel and adapted by Simon Stephens. 

The elephant in the room with this production—at least for myself—is that it’s coloured by my previous experience with the NT Live production that was screened in cinemas. But while the two productions share more than a passing similarity, director Sara Brodie does a wonderful job creating a production that more that succeeds own its own merits, even if it invites inevitable comparisons. [More] 

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The murder mystery genre is given an intriguing twist as Simon Stephens’ adaptation of Mark Haddon’s acclaimed novel draws us into an entirely different way of seeing the world. 

The story’s 15-year-old detective suffers from acute Asperger’s syndrome and his weirdly distorted perspective on life proves to be deeply revealing. With a chronic inability to lie, he exposes the hypocrisy and absurdity of everyday life and his wildly discursive intelligence, like a pop-up Wikipedia, supplies an endless stream of fun-facts along with poetic reflections on the structure of the universe. [More] 

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“My name is Christopher John Francis Boone. I know all the countries of the world and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7,507.”

It’s an early and perfect introduction to the world in which we find ourselves on a Saturday night. This is the opening of ATC’s latest production: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

Having decided to solve the mystery of who murdered his neighbour’s dog, Wellington, fifteen-year-old Christopher (Tim Earl) embarks upon a journey that takes him from Swindon all the way to London. Along the way he bumps into various characters and is forced to navigate an enormous multi-sensory world – one that is still largely intolerant of difference.

The set is an immediate representation of the highly textured, precise and monochrome lens through which our young protagonist views the world. John Verryt once again shows his immense technical skill in creating a world of almost mathematical precision, his split level cube design and checkerboard layout is both an apt metaphor for our hero’s experience of the world as well as his re-telling of this story. 

Adapted by Simon Stephens, this stage production remains faithful to Mark Haddon’s novel, to the point it almost requires some judicious editing. Nevertheless, Sara Brodie’s direction is swift and unrelenting, exposing us to a stream-of-consciousness that is beautifully cradled by both Christopher and his teacher Siobhan (Siobhan Marshall). Having two voices narrate the story varies both the pace and delivery and successfully gives this work a sensitivity and depth that makes the stage production incredibly engaging.

The leads are supported by a multi-talented ensemble with Wesley Dowdell as Christopher’s loving but frustrated father, Ed, and Hera Dunleavy as his mother, Judy, the latter a woman whose honestly reflects the challenges of raising children who think, respond and behave differently to what has been ‘normalised’ by society.

Damien Avery, Rima Te Wiata, Mel Odedra, Victoria Abbott and Peter Hayden also give strong performances, playing numerous characters with skill and deftness. Together the cast create a whirring world that is constantly on the move – a world that changes, evolves, rises and falls to create multiple surfaces for Tim Gruchy’s simple but highly effective AV design.

Occasionally there are a few disparities between the quasi-realistic world of the play and the choices occasionally made (blood on the floor but not on the face) but these are minor quibbles. The lighting also tends to flatten out some of the actor’s facial features; again, these are not major concerns. The production does tend to veer, especially towards the end, towards a somewhat ‘cutesy’ ending but in my experience over the past two years this is most definitely one of ATC’s most successful theatrical productions.  

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