Review

Review of Fall Play
Play: Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
Author: Mark Haddon
Date of view: 2019.11.15
Director: Olivia
Main Characters:
Christopher: Amelia
Judy: Pacifica
Ed: Will
Siobhan: Olivia

Word count: 1185

     The play Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime started with a dog being murdered, and Christopher, the main character tried to solve the mystery. His dad is a very impatient man even when he tries to talk with Christopher, he still sometimes gets triggered by Christopher's personality. In the beginning, Ed, Christopher's father told Christopher that his mom passed away, so Christopher will stop investigating the death of the dog. When Christopher was investigating the death of the dog, he met Mrs. Alexander, she revealed that Judy, Christopher's mother has an affair with their neighbor Mr. Roger, and Mrs. Alexander was really surprised when she heard about Judy's death. Christopher has a teacher named Mrs. Siobhan, she took really good care of Christopher because she knows that Christopher'ss personality can be very annoying to some people. She would help Christopher making decisions and talk to him when he is having trouble, she wants what's best for Christopher and so she recommended him to take maths A level. She worries that if Christopher's investigation will make Ed very angry so she tried to talk him out of it, but Christopher kept investigating around the neighborhood, and a while after, Ed found out. He took away Christopher's notes and hid it away. But when Ed took away Christopher's book, Christopher started looking for it right away. He found the book in Ed's closet, but besides the book, there is a box full of letters. When Christopher opens them, he realized that his mother Judy never died, she kept writing letters to him but Ed hid them away. In the letter, Christopher realized that Judy moved to London with Mr. Roger, and when Ed came into his room, he got furious and told Christopher that he killed the dog, Christopher realized that he can't stay with his dad anymore. Ed bought a train ticket and left, a lot of small accidents happened to show Christopher's personality. At last Christopher finally arrived in London, and when Judy saw Christopher she was both excited and worried. Judy wanted Christopher to stay, but Christopher wants to go back to do his maths A level test, and Mr. Roger wants to be alone with Judy. So a lot of conflicts have happened until Ed shows up and brings even more conflicts. Roger starts to act violently against Christopher because he is interrupting his life so Judy got really mad and agreed to let Christopher take his maths A level test and took him back to Swindon. Christopher got an A* for his test and Ed came to apologize to Christopher, Ed bought him a puppy and their relationship starts to heal back to the way it.
     The lighting of the play is my favorite, it shows the emotion of the characters, especially Christopher's. The blue light in the first scene when Christopher is daydreaming if he becomes an astronaut, the blue lights enlightens the mood and give the audience a sense of floating in space, and creates a dreamy atmosphere. And throughout the whole play lightings were frequently used to show the focus point on the stage, when Christopher was playing with the toys, or when Ed was sitting by the table yelling at Christopher. Lighting is extremely important in any art, and as a filmmaker, I love it when the lighting tells the story.
     The second most important part about a play is the staging of the actors. Just like in a film where the actor stands or moves can be very important for the whole picture. But a play is easier to arrange the staging because they don't have to worry about the camera, all the viewers or the audience are in a fixed place generally, so the most important part of a theatre staging is never turning your back on the audience and never block other actors from the audience, not if you want to do that on purpose. In this play, the staging was incredible, I mostly focused on the camera so I can see the whole picture. The actors moved around the stage to their position without questioning, and a lot of scenes has Christopher and Ed in the front and Siobhan on the side or in the back. This play is special because of the story is frequently changing actors that are talking. Siobhan appeared on the stage a lot because Christopher has to quickly change his position talking with Ed and Siobhan back and forth. The director perfectly emerged them together with staging and lighting is very impressive.
     Lastly the performance of the actors. Different to film, actors don't have to have really good acting skills in film because they can fix it by changing the camera position or the lighting, but in a play, there are no retakes, and if the actors made a mistake they have to keep going. In this play, even I've only seen the preact, I still find the actors fascinating, and experienced. There are barely any mistakes, they have to remember all their lines, not like a film we can shoot script by script, so it is very incredible that they can talk frequently and do the correct direction.
     A very memorable moment is when Christopher found his mother's letter, and instead of him speaking, his mom come up the stage as an image in Christopher's head while he plays with the toy trains, I really liked this moment because of the director's intention of emerging the real set and the imaginative set together is nearly perfect, with the lighting and the blocking of the stage, what the audience sees is incredible. We almost forgot Christopher's mom was an image of Christopher's thought, it felt so casual, and when she walks off the stage, we are still shocked by the twist. So that's why I loved this scene because the lighting the staging and the capturing of the time were perfect.
     My favorite character in the play is probably Ed, he's acting skills were amazing, I got scared three times by him when he shouted at Christopher, the outburst from him is incredible. Even the actor who played Christopher looked scared by him. But that's not it, the best part about him is that he can exchange his temper throughout the play, angry, sad, lonely, regret, those emotions are like toys in his hand played around like its nothing, that is the most important skill of an actor when they can control their emotion in a play, they become the center.
     I really liked this play generally, the story, the acting, the lighting and the directing were nearly perfect, it is incredible for me to see high school students putting up such a great play. As a filmmaker I am very jealous that I never had such great actors when I was making films, so I really need to start digging for those awesome actors.