One Very Curious Incident
Just opening at Anaheim’s Chance Theatre, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” offers telling insights into a son struggling with behavioral problems as he deals with wayward parents, but is most compelling in the not-to-miss way the story gets told.
Fifteen-year-old Christopher is “on the spectrum,” perhaps with something akin to Asperger’s syndrome: he can’t stand to be touched, fears strangers, never ventures far from home, and overacts when pressed in ways that dishearten his parents, alarm strangers, and eventually draw police scrutiny.
Aaron Lipp and Casey Long
At the same time, like Dustin Hoffman’s character in “Rain Man,” his extraordinary mental abilities help him master difficult academic tests at school with an ease far beyond his tender years. He also has little regard for, or perhaps awareness of, the feelings of others and has an odd habit of reciting long strings of prime numbers to calm himself down.
Just past midnight one night, Christopher comes across a neighbor’s dog that has been brutally killed. His odd ways of relating to people quickly make him the police’s principal suspect. The story then follows his dogged efforts to prove his innocence by tracking down—as would his hero, Sherlock Holmes—the dog’s real killer, an adventure that pushes Christopher well beyond the limitations his mental and emotional conditions have imposed.
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Told this way, you otherwise might have a possibly engrossing and certainly edifying way to show the difficulties a family might have in dealing with an emotionally challenged teenager—and the reverse, of a teenager surviving poor parenting. But you might also have one of those PBS documentaries you know you have to watch in case it comes up in polite conversation and you’ll be expected to deliver a few pithy remarks on the topic.
With “Incident,” what rivets you to your seat, though, and leaves you laughing out loud when you’re not shedding a tear, is the marvelously electric way the story is staged. As directed by Darryl B. Hovis and written by Simon Stephens based on a best-selling novel of the same name by Mark Haddon, “Incident” revolves naturally around Christopher, his parents, and a character, Siobhan, playing the narrator from the book Christopher writes about his adventures—in effect making the play an enactment of the book he’s writing during the play.
Swirling around them are a handful of other cast members who race across the stage, pop up from the aisles, and otherwise appear as everything from a feeble old neighbor to a train conductor to an ATM machine to a railway clerk to a long-in-the-tooth bobby to a teacher to, well, everything the story needs to keep you waiting for what’s next. It’s a long play at two and a half hours, but the energetic stagecraft keeps you alert and focused.
Playing the lead, Aaron Lipp inhabits his character so well that you wonder if he’s on the same spectrum as Christopher—and in fact says as much in the playbill notes, calling himself a “neurodivergent actor.” Partnering with him, Rachel Oliveros Catalano plays Siobhan, the narrator who keeps the sense of the story clearly before you. Also center stage are Casey Long, who plays Christopher’s often too angry father, Ed, and Karen O’Hanlon, who plays his long-time absent mother, Judy—all doing wonderful jobs in helping bring the play to a heartwarming close.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time plays at the marvelous Chance Theatre in Anaheim, 5522 E. La Palma Avenue, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays through October 22nd.
The opinions expressed here are solely the author's and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the Hollywood Progressive.
