By Evelyn C. McDonald
Arts & Culture Reporter
June 19, 2019 6:56 a.m.
Last Saturday, I went to see “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time” at the Amelia Community Theatre. It was a different experience as I’m in Ron Kurtz’ course covering the play and the book from which it was adapted. As with some earlier courses on plays, this one addressed the challenges in turning a book into a play.
The play concerns the efforts of Christopher (a young boy) to solve the mystery of who killed his neighbor’s dog. Christopher must do this in a manner that accommodates his personality issues as he is autistic. He dislikes the colors yellow and brown, doesn’t want anyone to touch him, and gets upset in crowds. Solving the mystery will require him to talk to people, travel by train and subway, and cope with totally new environments.
It is a play that succeeds or doesn’t by the performance of the lead. As Christopher, Christian Douglas was excellent. He was both sympathetic and frustrating in a totally believable manner. He was admirably supported by his father Ed (Steve Parrot), his mother Judy (Susie Bledsoe) and his teacher Siobhan (Leslie Ousley). There were six other “voices” on stage representing 23 other characters.
It was the fifth course Ron has done in the Amelia Lifelong Learning-Amelia Community Theatre’s series, The Play’s the Thing. In this one he explored yet another facet of the theatre. We read the book and the script. Ron brought in Theresa Sparks to talk about autism and Marilyn Wesley to talk about the book. He also brought in Tener Wade, the director, to talk about the choices he made in staging the play. One of those choices made my appreciation of the play that much better.
Tener used lights and sounds to great effect in the play. In one scene, Christopher is at the railway station. There are lights and sounds everywhere – snippets of conversations, car horns, rail announcements. Theresa showed the class a video to illustrate the sensory overload that so disturbs autistic individuals. An autistic boy in a mall is subject to loud music, people talking, multiple colors, movements. All the sounds and colors that we ignore crashed in on him. We were thus able to appreciate the scene in the railway station for the trauma it was to Christopher. He becomes overloaded with lights and sounds, and retreats to curl up on the floor reciting number sequences to calm himself.
Having read both the book and the script, I wondered if the endings would seem the same. It was a hopeful ending. Christopher has accomplished so much in spite of what he is and because of what he is. And he realized it.
There are three more performances of the play so there’s still a chance to see an interesting and entertaining play. For ticket information, call the Box Office (904) 261-6749 or go on-line to www.ameliacommnitytheatre.org
Evelyn McDonald moved to Fernandina Beach from the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. in 2006. Evelyn is vice-chair on the Amelia Center for Lifelong Learning and is on the Dean’s Council for the Carpenter Library at the UNF. Ms. McDonald has MS in Technology Management from the University of Maryland’s University College and a BA in Spanish from the University of Michigan.