“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” is a complex life equation, patiently probed and thrillingly answered by a talented group of creative problem-solvers.
The internationally acclaimed National Theatre adaptation of Mark Haddon’s best-selling book, scripted by the arch British social-realist playwright Simon Stephens, is brought to vivid life by an accomplished team of designers and physical-theater specialists. The ensemble cast performs acrobatics both physical and mental.
Simply put, it’s a head rush. The national tour of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” continues at The Bushnell through Sunday.
Appropriate for a show that intersects on several different levels of entertainment and enlightenment, “The Curious Incident…” is presented with multi-planed mathematical precision. Essentially, it’s an enhanced coming-of-age story. A child finds purpose in his life, learns uncomfortable truths about his parents and the world around him, and sets out on a journey.
The protagonist is a 15-year-old boy named Christopher. Though it’s not stated outright, Christopher appears to be on the autism spectrum. His adventure is told mostly through his own voice and perceptions. He counts in prime numbers to calm himself, and often clarifies his thoughts through scientific methodology. As he ponders, the stage walls behind him (which are grid-lined like graph paper) erupt with numbers, lines and schematics, illustrating his intellectual exertions.
A relatively innocuous line from the book such as “the roaring turned into a clattering and a squealing and it got slowly quieter and then it stopped and I kept my eyes closed because I felt safer not seeing what was happening” can, in the stage version, trigger a sensory overload of sights, sounds and dramatic anxieties. The book’s stream-of-hyperconsciousness style — in which Christopher’s reactions to new experiences are rendered through flat declaratory sentences, charts, diagrams and symbols — is matched onstage by a whirl of physical activity.
The acting ensemble is given intentional limitations. The performers mime their props, and one actor may take on half a dozen named roles and dozens of unnamed bypasser or onlooker ones. When a new setting is required, the players whisk a few square rehearsal boxes from one side of the stage to the other, adding to the depiction of Christopher’s hectic, overstimulated mood.
A lot of the humor in the play — and there are plenty of laughs, despite all the anguish — comes from Christopher’s literal interpretation of metaphors that come up in everyday conversation. There’s a danger here, as the script risks mocking and exploiting Christopher’s condition and the way he processes the world around him. But the production deflects this issue by making every person in the play just as distinctive, challenged and frustrated in their own ways.
As Christopher’s parents, whose marital issues are at the center of the boy’s revelatory adventures, Felicity Jones Latta and Tim Wright run the emotional gamut of patience, weariness, testiness, anger and relief.
The demanding role of Christopher, who is onstage for the entire two-and-half-hour performance and even indulges in an exhilarating math-based encore, is alternated between two actors on the tour. Adam Langdon played the part on Tuesday night, and will again at the Wednesday, Friday and Saturday night performances as well as the Sunday matinee. His boyish features and gangly limbs helped are a constant reminder that Christopher, with his exceptional mind and rigid, mature thought patterns, is still a boy. Benjamin Wheelwright will play Christopher on Thursday and Sunday night and Saturday afternoon.
Some of the faces in the cast will be familiar to Connecticut theatergoers. A few were in the tour of a previous hit National Theatre literary adaptation, “War Horse,” which graced The Bushnell two years ago. Several are renowned in the regional theater realm and have been seen at Hartford Stage, Yale Rep, Long Wharf and elsewhere.
“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” has the heft and spectacle of a Broadway show, yet draws its power from small theater and experimental theater techniques. There’s plenty of up-close human interaction, which is all the more striking since the central character recoils whenever someone tries to touch him.
This show has all the high-tech effects it could desire at its disposal — gigantic projection screens, starry-night lights that reflect off of the walls in the auditorium, a raked stage platform that tilts the action toward the audience — but it places raw human emotion at the forefront. A curious choice, perhaps, but an incredibly smart one.
“THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME” is at The Bushnell, 166 Capitol Ave., Hartford, continues through Sunday, Jan. 1. Performances are Wednesday through Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at both 1 and 6:30 p.m. $25.50-$95.50. 860-987-5900 and bushnell.org.
