I loved Mark Haddon's book about an autistic teen navigating parental drama while trying to solve a neighbourhood murder mystery!
One of my all-time faves, too! So I was really looking forward to Auckland Theatre Company's production, but at the same time, I was nervous about whether they'd do justice to the book.
Well, it just so happens that the stage adaptation preserves all the tension and sense of adventure and discovery of the original story. I sat riveted throughout.
Were we really there for three hours? It didn't seem that long at all! So what made it so good?
Well, for a start, Tim Earl is utterly convincingly as fifteen year old Christopher. Who is very much at the centre of the whole production, as you'd expect of a play based on a first-person narrative novel. The other characters enter and exit the stage area as they enter and exit Christopher's stream of consciousness. The ensemble cast of nine create this swirl of characters deftly, without breaking the flow of the story, which is a tribute to them and Sara Brodie's direction.
Given the nature of the book, the play could easily have been a monologue. But playwright Simon Stephens has cleverly beefed up a minor character - Siobhan, Christopher's teacher and confidante - and put her in this lovely narrative tag-team arrangement. Siobhan Marshall does a fantastic job of slipping in and out of the action to keep the story flowing.
But it's not a two-person show, by any means. The rest of the book's inhabitants play an essential part dramatising key parts of the story and injecting tension, challenge and humour into Christopher's quest. Even the English West Country accents were pretty good!
The set is an instant winner. It's just a bunch of white blocks, but they become projection screens, furniture, cupboards and map out the entire geography of the play.
Yes! It seems like this blocky minimalism is designed to reflect the orderly, angular patterns of Christopher's thought processes - so we get a little closer to experiencing the world from his perspective.
Yup - getting inside Christopher's head was the best part of the book for me. So the way were effectively taken from place to place via the continuous rearrangement of the blocks worked perfectly. And I never once pined for a more 'realistic' set.
If I have one grouch it's that the play became annoyingly (to me) self-referential towards the end: "Hey this is a play about a play about a book about a book!" It was the one thing that broke the spell of the story and I could've lived without it.
Hair-splitting aside, I loved the play and I wish I could recommend you all go and see it, but unfortunately the whole run is now sold out! Wait for it to come round again and snap up some tickets.
