Curious Incident of the Dog at night time review and plot-Jack

On the 6^th of November 2014 we saw The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. This was in the Gielgud Theatre in Shaftsbury Avenue. The Play is made from a book by… The Plot is that Christopher was a 15 year old boy on the autism spectrum who finds his neighbour, Mrs Shears’ dog dead, impaled with a pitchfork. The rest of the play is him trying to find out who killed the dog. Very early on in the play we are told that Christopher’s mother, Judy, was ill in hospital and she soon dies. The narrative is spoken by Christopher’s teacher reading from the book he has written about the dog. Later in the story it is discovered that Christopher’s mum may have had an affair with Mr Shears. When Christopher questions his dad, Ed, he tells him to ignore it and not to talk of it again and proceeds to take the book Christopher was writing. When searching for the book in his dad’s room he finds lots of letters addressed to him in his mother’s handwriting, the date on the stamps is after she died. He reads some of the letters and finds that his mother had not died but had an affair with Mr Shears and ran away with him.  He is so shocked by his father lying about his mother's death that he is unable to move, curls up on the bed, vomits and groans for several hours until his father returns home. Ed realizes that Christopher has read the letters and cleans him up. He then confesses that he had indeed lied about Judy's death and also that it was he who killed Wellington, stating that it was a mistake resulting from his anger after a heated argument with Mrs Shears. Christopher, having lost all trust in his father and fearing that Ed might try to kill him since he had already killed the dog, runs away. Guided by his mother's address from the letters, he embarks on an adventurous trip to London, where his mother lives with Mr Shears Christopher decides to go to London to find her but doesn’t know how to gt there. Eventually he gets to the train station in the town and gets a train to London Waterloo and has to take the tube to find the house. He eventually finds the house and is looked after by his mum until his dad arrives an wants to take him but is not allowed as Christopher wants to stay with his mum but Mr Shears cannot deal with it and Christopher is desperate to take his A-level maths so she takes Christopher back to Swindon, where he spends time with both his mum and dad and eventually he takes his A-level Maths and passes with and A* grade.

I loved this play. One of the things I liked most was the use of the stage was fantastic. The stage was like a giant whiteboard as when the stage floor was drawn on it was projected onto the back of the stage. This was used to great effect with the detective style mind-map for the possible culprits of the murder. The stage also moved in on Christopher which was a brilliant use to show how the world felt to him at that time, pushing him towards harm. The Back of the stage became and escalator at one point in the play which was brilliant as it was flat to start with but the squares at the back opened out to form steps. The rest of the stage was littered with the squares that opened like cupboards and so could hold many things. A devise that I liked was the use of the train track to show how far the journey had come, during a few scenes there would be someone else talking while Christopher was putting together the track. It was a very emotional play at times such as the moving way the mum spoke about how hard she tried with Christopher and how much she loves him. There was also a good way to convey that Christopher was a loving as a child as he hates people touching him but the use of a hand held out for a slow high five was only done with the parents to show the connection between the three of them.

The use of physical theatre was incredible, from the use of the other actors as the house and the mat to the other actors holding Christopher up to walk on walls and to spin him around. The physicality was fantastic, at one point Christopher was spun vertically 360 degrees by the other actors in such a swift movement that made it very effective. The use of people as the house was useful as it gave me many ideas for our own piece. The Physical theatre part helped me and others to generate more ideas such as the last scene will now have us being mainly physical such as becoming a Labyrinth corridor and dragging Brittany upstage and then closing in on her.