Curious Incident

I went to see The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, based on the book of that name. It was less Sherlockian than I hoped; they mentioned once that Christopher liked reading Holmes stories, but did not even explain that the title quote came from a particular story.

I got cheap tickets way up high, but was allowed to come forward 4 rows because that section was mostly unsold. I was still too far away to see any faces, so some emotional, dramatic moments were hard to read and felt like they went on too long. I particularly thought that there was going to be an act break during the scene where Christopher's dad finds him after he discovers the truth about his mother, but the intermission came long after that. Also I found the ending ambiguous when Christopher keeps asking his teacher if he can do anything, and she just glances at the audience and won't answer him.

The production had a lot of jarring light/sound effects to create Christopher's sensory overload, but after a while the special effects felt gimmicky and too long. It also became unclear what was happening in the real world while he was stuck in his internal frenzy. The scenes in London did remind me a bit of my trip to London, from Paddington train station to all the tube stops. It was nice to hear all the British accents, and several moments were funny. An interesting story, though I'm not sure I liked the way it was told.