This Made Up for the Light Show

The other night I went to a play in the West End.  The play was called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.  Quite the mouthful, but it was brilliant.  And by brilliant, I don’t mean British brilliant.  I mean brilliant, brilliant.  As with a lot of things over here, I think I heard/read about it randomly somewhere.  I really only heard that it had good reviews, so I didn’t have a whole lot of expectations nor did I even really know what it was about.  Maybe my minimal expectations had something to do with it, but I was thoroughly impressed.

As a side note, it was interesting going to a play with all Brits speaking.  “Duh!”, you say.  “You are in London.”  I know…I know.  I saw Shakespeare’s The Tempest here, but somehow it made sense for all the actors to be speaking with a British accent.  It was Shakespeare after all.

I digress…back to the play. 

The theater, the Apollo Theatre, isn’t anything really fancy.  It is quite small in comparison to some other theatres I’ve been in and it is old.  As there was no main lobby to speak of, everyone was spilled out on the sidewalk waiting to be allowed to go to their seats.  The entrance to my seats was actually down the block from the main entrance.  I went up to my seats and was amazed at how cramped in everything was.  There was no leg room to speak of, so trying to get to my seat, which was 4 seats in from the aisle, proved to be an adventure.  Everyone had to leave the row so I could get into my seat.  Made me realize there was no getting up and down.  I was in it for the long haul.  Good thing I stopped in the loo beforehand.  

Thankfully, the play was so entertaining that I didn’t think about the lack of leg room.  The play, based on a book of the same name, is about a 15-year old boy named Christopher.  He is a math prodigy with autism.  The story is based upon his quest to find out who killed the neighbor’s dog, but it evolves so much from there.  I don’t want to give too much away about it, but I will say that it was one of the best plays that I’ve been to in a long time.

After going to the play, I found out that it had swept the 2013 Olivier Awards (the British version of the Tony’s).  It was named best new play and Luke Treadaway won the best actor category.  He was amazing.  From the dislike of people touching him to the very literal answers to questions he was asked, he captured the characteristics of an autistic child remarkably well.  It was heart wrenching to see him interact with his parents.  They did a fantastic job of conveying the controlled frustration that they face on a daily basis.  There were parts of the play that had me near tears (awkward when you consider I was on my own, but I didn’t really care).

All in all, I loved it.  I have no idea if it is going to make it over the pond, but if it does, I highly recommend it.  I did hear that Brad Pitt optioned the rights for it for a movie.  It will tick me off if he ruins it.  If Angelina Jolie plays the mother, I’m boycotting.