IT would be unfair to compare and contrast Ned Bennett’s new vision of Simon Stephens’s stage adaptation of Mark Haddon’s novel with Marianne Elliott’s remarkable piece of total theatre for the National Theatre (and subsequent tours), a show that defined the possibilities of movement (by Frantic Assembly), set design (Bunny Christie) and lighting (Paule Constable), integrated with music and video.
The new ‘Curious Incident’ must stand or fall on its own virtues. Nevertheless, all those ingredients are present anew in Bennett’s reinvention, one that is more playful yet darker, the language more visceral, the adults harsher.
The one key change, beyond the addition of Minecraft and the teenage lead character not being allowed a mobile phone, is that 15-year-old Christopher Boone is now female: Chris, played by Alex Keenan and matinee alternate Imi Price, who are both neurodivergent, like Chris.
Melting Pot and Birmingham Rep’s touring production takes care to be as inclusive as possible for neurodivergent theatregoers. At the start, narrator and Chris’s teacher Siobhan (Bridgette Amofah) steps through the curtain to explain how each performance will be “relaxed”, retaining the auditorium lighting on a low level and using a gradually rising sound to build to moments of highest commotion.
This decision comes in response to reports of neurodivergent audience members having found the National Theatre production too loud, too bright. Furthermore, Eleanor Bull’s set design has taken great care in its choice of colour, and indeed the pastel tone of that colour: a soft pink (and sometimes white) to match the soft play look of the cavernous open-plan stage with its moveable foam blocks for beds and more besides.
Everything is seen through the eyes and notebook notes of Keenan’s Swindon teen Chris, albeit sometimes filtered through the mouth of the narrator, as the science, Maths and rat-loving teenager opens the play prone over the newly dead dog of potty-mouthed neighbour Mrs Shears (Alex Murdoch).
Wellington’s body has been skewered by a gardening fork. Mrs Shears duly accuses Chris. Not so, says Chris, who never lies, vowing to turn detective to find out whodunit, against the orders of her father, the ever-stressed, prone-to-shouting Ed (Joe McFadden), who is struggling both with looking after Chris and the “loss” of his wife, Judy (Charlie Brooks).
She has died in hospital, from a heart attack, he tells Chris, whose investigations will lead not only to a revelation of the dog killer but her discovery of a web of sex, lies, infidelity and general unhappiness, whereas her own disposition is one of positivity, frankness and good cheer, in the face of falling foul of the police or frustrating her father.
Bull’s design combines with Laura Deward’s lighting, Hayley Egan’s video projections, Matt Hutchinson’s puppetry and especially Jennifer Jackson’s movement direction to best effect in ensemble scenes where the supporting company plays multiple roles or rolls gymnastically, enacting what’s going on inside Chris’s head, often with a humorous physicality or verbal punch to complement the technical craft.
However, Scott Graham and Stephen Hoggett’s choreography was wholly superior for the National Theatre, especially in the cacophonous set-piece zenith of Chris trying to negotiate her way through the rail transport system, from Swindon to her mother’s London address via the London Underground.
Typified by Chris being trapped in a cage full of product-promoting bouncing yellow balls – her least favourite colour – the accumulative effect is to capture Chris’s befuddlement at behaviour all around her and her determination to survive against the tide of anxiety and unfathomable adversity, but sometimes there are lulls in momentum.
Less impactful, to the ultimate cost of Bennett’s production, are Chris’s more intimate, emotional family scenes, whether with McFadden’s Ed, drowned by his large chair on an otherwise barren stage more than once, or with Brooks’s apologetic Judy. The design swallows up what should be the heightened drama of these key moments.
Rising above everything, however, is Keenan’s remarkable performance, one that encapsulates Chris’s characteristics of taking every utterance literally, her dislike of being touched, her boundlessly mathematical mind, her sensory and physical discomfort with strangers.
Melting Pot and Birmingham Rep present The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.