Curious
On our last night in London, we went to a play in the West End. We went to see The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night–Time. We had heard good things about it, and we were very interested in how they turned the story into a play. Mark Haddon’s book is wonderful, but it depends heavily on the structure and conventions of books. It uses several tricks which would be hard to replicate on stage. The answer is that they didn’t worry too much about that and replaced those features with stagecraft, and things which depend on the conventions of plays.
The result is quite brilliant. They used a sparse set, a relatively small cast, and built a world where anything could happen. There was some fourth wall breaking, but it was used well, and with the right amount of humor.
One interesting thing they did to get the audience involved early is that marked some of the seats in white. These were the seats which would be prime when assigned ordinals working out from the stage. The story was that Christopher, the main character, had come out and marked them before the show because prime numbers are so important. And if you were sitting in one of these seats, as I was, then you should check whether the sum of the letters in your name was also prime. If it was, then you should go to the box office at the internal, and claim a prize. If you add up the letters in Michael Garrity you’ll get 149, which is, of course a prime number, so at the interval I headed for the box office. A young boy from one of the other prime seats near me also headed up. When we got there the usher just handed each of us a prize – without checking our names! The boy and I exchanged a look which said a lot about how we felt about people who don’t do things in the correct way but we didn’t say anything, because we’ve learned that it’s best not to make a fuss in that sort of situation.
The result is quite brilliant. They used a sparse set, a relatively small cast, and built a world where anything could happen. There was some fourth wall breaking, but it was used well, and with the right amount of humor.
One interesting thing they did to get the audience involved early is that marked some of the seats in white. These were the seats which would be prime when assigned ordinals working out from the stage. The story was that Christopher, the main character, had come out and marked them before the show because prime numbers are so important. And if you were sitting in one of these seats, as I was, then you should check whether the sum of the letters in your name was also prime. If it was, then you should go to the box office at the internal, and claim a prize. If you add up the letters in Michael Garrity you’ll get 149, which is, of course a prime number, so at the interval I headed for the box office. A young boy from one of the other prime seats near me also headed up. When we got there the usher just handed each of us a prize – without checking our names! The boy and I exchanged a look which said a lot about how we felt about people who don’t do things in the correct way but we didn’t say anything, because we’ve learned that it’s best not to make a fuss in that sort of situation.
The second half was even better than the first. They did a great job with the scene about Christopher’s trip to London on his own. He travels through the same stations we had been going through the last couple of days, and the half dozen actors on a bare stage did a great job of capturing the feel of those stations.
We thoroughly enjoyed the evening, and would recommend seeing the play if you get a chance.
We thoroughly enjoyed the evening, and would recommend seeing the play if you get a chance.
