{"id":219,"date":"2020-01-19T15:01:30","date_gmt":"2020-01-19T15:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amylangston.com\/?p=219"},"modified":"2025-12-26T18:49:33","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T18:49:33","slug":"autism-on-stage-the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night-time-at-raleigh-little-theatre-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amylangston.com\/index.php\/2020\/01\/19\/autism-on-stage-the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night-time-at-raleigh-little-theatre-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Autism on Stage: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time at Raleigh Little Theatre Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, <\/em>which I recently reviewed<\/a>, was adapted into a play by Simon Stephens. It opened in the West End on August 2, 2012 and closed on June 3, 2017. It had a Broadway run, from October 5, 2014-September 4, 2016. It won prestigious theatre awards, including the Tony Award for Best Play and an Olivier Award for Best New Play. Now it is licensed for use by professional and community theatres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raleigh Little Theatre in Raleigh, North Carolina is presenting the play as part of their 2019-2020 season. It is the first local production of Curious Incident.<\/em> The play features the talents of Michael Larson (Christopher), Simon Kaplan (Ed, Christopher\u2019s father), Rebecca Blum (Judy, Christopher\u2019s mother), Samantha Corey (Siobhan, Christopher\u2019s school social worker), and Benji Jones, George Labusohr, Naveed Moeed, Joey DeSena, Kimmy Fiorentino, and Lucinda Danner Gainey in the ensemble. The play was directed by Patrick Torres. I will state at the outset that Raleigh Little Theatre is a fantastic theatre company that I strongly encourage everyone to continue visiting and supporting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found\nthe play to be a faithful adaptation of the source material, which for me, is\nnot really a good thing. My review of the novel makes it clear that I am not a\nfan, so I went in with an inherent bias\u2014keep that in mind as you read this\nreview. I also go in knowing that as part of the audition process, RLT was\nadamant about recruiting an autistic actor for the role of Christopher, which\nmany people in the local autism community (including myself) were elated about.\nI had no involvement in the production, so I don\u2019t know what was in the script,\nwhat was the director\u2019s creative decisions, or what were the actors\u2019 chosen\ninterpretations for their performances. Given that, I write this review knowing\nthat I don\u2019t know who was responsible for what\u2014I can only comment on what I saw\nand how it made me feel, and that most of my issue is with the source material,\nnot the actors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This play\nwas well-cast. I found the performances to be over-dramatic at times, moreso\nthan I imagined the characters behaving as I was reading the novel, but hey,\nit\u2019s theatre. Kaplan and Blum, in particular, gave powerful performances as\nChristopher\u2019s parents. They recruited a winning cast of diverse performers for\nthe ensemble roles, enriching the on-stage presence. Michael Larson was a worthy\nchoice for the role of Christopher\u2014he unsurprisingly nailed the autistic\nmannerisms like cadence of speech and facial expressions. Additionally, the set\ndesign and staging was a clever execution of bringing the story to life. The\ncostumes assigned a color palette to the characters (Christopher=red, Ed=blue,\nSiobhan=green, ensemble=black), which was very interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within all\nthat, I still take issue with the story being told. It\u2019s been nearly a year\nsince I\u2019ve read the book it was based on, and I\u2019m reminded of what I found so\nproblematic in it. For example, Christopher believes fiction to be a form of\n\u201clying\u201d and therefore worthless. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve met an autistic who would\nconcur with this assessment, especially since fiction isn\u2019t truly lying when\nthe audience knows it\u2019s fictional. This is not really how an autistic aversion\nto lying (which isn\u2019t universal) manifests anyway. Another example is that in this\nproduction, Christopher curls into a fetal position every time he is upset. I\nrealize this might be for dramatic effect, but I\u2019ll say for the record we don\u2019t\nall do this. My reaction to stress is more often to freeze and\/or exit than it\nis to visibly react.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This play\nis intense, with very few comedic moments to be found. Because it was filled\nwith autistic stereotypes and exposed the inner workings of the autistic brain\non full display, it was painful to watch, like a voyeuristic journey into the\nmost intimate parts of the mind for someone like me. The person sitting next to\nme, when I explained my background and my reception of the book, noted that for\na non-autistic audience member, watching this play could be a empathetic\ninteraction with the challenges of living with autism: like swirling in a\nwhirlpool of never-ending thoughts as a stranger in a world that doesn\u2019t make\nsense. I can see that myself as well. If you watch this play or read this book,\nI hope that is your takeaway, and not that this is what is what all, or most,\nautistics are like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nCurious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time <\/em>runs at\nRaleigh Little Theatre in the Gaddy-Goodwin Teaching Theatre from January\n17-February 8, 2020. Running time is 2.5 hours. With some strong language and\nintense themes, parental discretion is advised. As part of RLT\u2019s commitment to\ninclusive theatre for all, a sensory-friendly performance will be offered on\nFebruary 9 at 3pm (their first sensory-friendly production for adults). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which I recently reviewed, was adapted into a play by Simon Stephens. It opened in the West End on August 2, 2012 and closed on June 3, 2017. It had a Broadway run, from October 5, 2014-September 4, 2016. It won prestigious theatre awards, … Continue reading Autism on Stage: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time at Raleigh Little Theatre Review<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amylangston.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amylangston.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amylangston.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amylangston.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amylangston.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/amylangston.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224,"href":"https:\/\/amylangston.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions\/224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amylangston.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amylangston.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amylangston.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}