{"id":25661,"date":"2014-09-12T23:46:37","date_gmt":"2014-09-12T15:46:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=25661"},"modified":"2025-03-10T04:05:16","modified_gmt":"2025-03-10T08:05:16","slug":"how-the-the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night-time-became-a-stage-hit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/09\/12\/how-the-the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night-time-became-a-stage-hit\/","title":{"rendered":"How \u2018The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time\u2019 became a stage hit"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"From<\/a>
From Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NEW YORK\u2014In a rehearsal room near Times Square, Alex Sharp is about to jump.<\/p>\n

The brand-new Juilliard School graduate with a starring role in Broadway\u2019s \u201cThe Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time\u201d is practicing a scene in which he must leap into the arms of four actors as part of a dream sequence.<\/p>\n

Arms out like Superman, Sharp jumps. His cast mates catch him and lift him over their heads, but it\u2019s all a little awkward.<\/p>\n

\u201cStop!\u201d yells co-movement director Scott Graham as the music cuts off. \u201cThat wasn\u2019t quite it. Alex, you hesitated, and there wasn\u2019t quite enough space to jump, yeah?\u201d<\/p>\n

There are still many days to go for Sharp to perfect the sequence before opening night next month, but he\u2019s not alone in the challenge: He and the cast and crew are all making a huge leap of faith.<\/p>\n

Turning Mark Haddon\u2019s bestselling novel of the same name into a play has been one of the more audacious acts in the theatre, a transformation that not even the author thought possible.<\/p>\n

After all, the hero is a 15-year-old boy with Asperger\u2019s syndrome whose range of emotional responses is limited. The teen, Christopher, doesn\u2019t understand metaphors or jokes, abhors physical contact and has a carload of quirks. \u201cI was convinced for a long while that the book was unstageable,\u201d Haddon writes via email.<\/p>\n

The man who defied that thinking is playwright Simon Stephens, a friend of Haddon but something of an unlikely adapter. \u201cMy imaginary world tends to be a dark old place populated by psychopaths and killers,\u201d Stephens says.<\/p>\n

Haddon had been asked many times to try to adapt his own work but had demurred. \u201cI\u2019m not sure I could perform the necessary surgery on my own offspring,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n

So he turned to his friend, Stephens, whose gritty dramas include \u201cPunk Rock,\u201d \u201cPort\u201d and \u201cWastwater.\u201d The two were of similar age, both were fathers and liked the same kind of music. \u201cIt was the friendship and the sense that my stuff wasn\u2019t sentimental that led him to approach me to think about adapting it,\u201d Stephens says.<\/p>\n

Stephens agreed to try but only if he could keep the commission quiet and approach it like an experiment, reserving the right to fail. He went about the work methodically.<\/p>\n

First, he put all the book\u2019s events in chronological order, then transcribed all the direct speech. A skeletal script emerged and Stephens then reframed the play to be read aloud by Christopher\u2019s teacher and retained its unreliable, off-kilter vibe.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you read the book, he captures the kind of magic you get when you watch great dance,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd although he\u2019s just talking about quadratic equations or about mathematical solutions, there\u2019s something of the dance about Christopher\u2019s brain.\u201d<\/p>\n

The play was still sort of rough by the time Marianne Elliott jumped aboard as director. It had no real scenes yet and it asked the actors to sometimes lie down and pretend to be train tracks.<\/p>\n

buy promethazine online tapmedicine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/png\/promethazine.html<\/a> no prescription pharmacy <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Elliott, an associate director of the Royal National Theatre who co-directed \u201cWar Horse,\u201d wanted to echo the fluidity in the script onstage.<\/p>\n

buy amoxicillin online tapmedicine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/png\/amoxicillin.html<\/a> no prescription pharmacy <\/div>\n

So the stage was divided into simple geometric squares\u2014reflecting Christopher\u2019s fascination with order\u2014and scenes dissolve seamlessly, aided by clever lighting and projections.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was quite a poetic piece so I felt like we had to produce it in a poetic way without worrying about realism or naturalism,\u201d Elliott says. \u201cI wanted a sense of disorientation as well as a sense of the audience being inside what was going on in his head.\u201d<\/p>\n

She says she and the creative team were working outside their comfort zones. \u201cWe had absolutely no idea how it was going to go.\u201d One of the actors even confessed he thought the concept wouldn\u2019t work. \u201cHe came \u2018round,\u201d she says, laughing.<\/p>\n

buy propecia online tapmedicine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/png\/propecia.html<\/a> no prescription pharmacy <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

The National Theatre put it in its smallest theatre and gave it a 40-performance run. But great reviews soon helped it jump to the West End\u2019s Apollo Theatre, where it won seven Olivier Awards. Then the roof of the theatre collapsed during a December performance, injuring almost 80.<\/p>\n

None of the cast and crew wanted Christopher\u2019s story to end that way, so they put on a series of benefit performances, found a new home in London and jumped again to Broadway, hoping Americans also would appreciate the daring playfulness of the adaptation.<\/p>\n

Haddon, who, after seeing an early preview, told Stephens that it had helped him fall back in love with his book, now has two productions of a novel he once thought could never make the stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel proud, befuddled, amazed, tangentially connected,\u201d he writes. \u201cI\u2019m the grandparent. Without me it couldn\u2019t have happened. But I changed none of the diapers and it now has a life wholly independent of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Online<\/h6>\n

http:\/\/curiousonbroadway.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK\u2014In a rehearsal room near Times Square, Alex Sharp is about to jump. The brand-new Juilliard School graduate with …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":25662,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","mauthors-mark-kennedy","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25661"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":287964,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25661\/revisions\/287964"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}