The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time review – Hong Kong Arts Festival production fails to move, but play still a dazzling, thrilling ride
National Theatre of Britain production for the Hong Kong Arts Festival is entertaining, funny and a hi-tech exercise in theatre, but it failed to engage the emotions of this reviewer and lead actor is not plausible as his character
Among the most eagerly anticipated offerings of this year’s Hong Kong Arts Festival is one of the most awarded theatre productions of recent years: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
First staged in 2012 at London’s National Theatre, the adaptation by Simon Stephens of Mark Haddon’s bestselling book has been a hit with audiences and critics worldwide ever since. In 2013 it swept the board at the Olivier Awards in Britain, and repeated the feat at Broadway’s Tony Awards in 2015. Its success has been further boosted by the book becoming a set text for schools, as evidenced by the number of teenage school groups at Hong Kong’s Lyric Theatre on its first night here.
Theatre at its best – Hong Kong Arts Festival left wanting more after Theatre of Nations’ stunning Shukshin’s Stories
The story’s protagonist, Christopher Boone, is a 15-year-old with what he himself describes as “behavioural problems”. Lying somewhere on the autistic scale, he sees the world in an extremely literal way (making him unable to lie), has an extreme aversion to being touched and excels at mathematical problems that can be solved by pure logic. Problems involving human beings, however, are a different matter.
The story opens with Christopher discovering the corpse of his neighbour’s dog, impaled on a garden fork. His investigation of what he regards as a murder leads to revelations about his parents, which push him to embark alone on an epic journey from his home in Swindon to London.
The book has been praised for making readers see the world from Christopher’s point of view, and Marianne Elliott’s production sets out to help the audience do the same.
Dazzling design evokes the way Christopher sees everything from the wonder of the stars and the numbers that flood his mind to the terrors of taking the London Underground (a stunning sequence). This is all thanks to Bunny Christie’s astounding set, Paule Constable’s lighting and Finn Ross’ video.