The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

How do you show what it’s like to travel on the London Underground in a theatre? As the Designer of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon, adapted for the stage by Simon Stephens, that was one of my biggest challenges.

So I took the journey myself and made notes on the sounds, smells, atmosphere, energy and lighting. Then the whole creative team worked together to make it feel exciting and frightening, loud and chaotic, so that the audience can experience it through Christopher’s eyes. The first half of the show shows Christopher in his home town of Swindon. He is trying to find out who killed Wellington, his neighbour’s dog. The second half of the show shows Christopher running away and travelling by himself to London.

Theatre director Marianne Elliott always said the first half is a murder mystery but the second half is an adventure thriller. Initially, Christopher finds the journey onto the London Underground very exciting. He loves the escalators and the ticket machines but once he is on the platform he finds it really frightening. He doesn’t like being near lots of strangers and he doesn’t like loud noises. Added to this he is travelling with his pet rat, Toby, who escapes onto the tracks. Christopher jumps onto the track to get Toby back and because he hates being touched he resists the help of other passengers to pull him back onto the platform.

The set is a box of tricks, full of led lights and speakers and overlaid with projection. This means that the set surrounding Christopher can have an energy that can become overwhelming. For this section of the story we really pushed all these elements up to the maximum.

The Tube system feels like a mechanical monster that Christopher has to negotiate. He has to be brave and overcome his fear in order to make the journey. As he jumps onto the tracks, the other passengers are terrified. The approaching Tube train is created with blinding lights, increasing thunderous rumbles and smoke. It’s the start of a very disturbing and full throttle journey. The rhythm of the Tube trains arriving and the doors opening and the passengers getting on gave us a pattern of movement for the actors. It is almost a dance that Christopher tries to copy.

The actors move together and are dressed in grey so they feel like an anonymous mob whilst Christopher is in his favourite orange jacket. As they all get onto the Tube carriage, Christopher is rolled around as though he is in a washing machine of chaos. He has no control over who is touching him and his personal space - it is a feeling I’m sure most of us recognise in rush hour on a really busy Tube carriage. His sense of claustrophobia comes to a pitch of mounting panic.

I really wanted to illustrate this sense of being in a confined space and it feeling like a nightmare. To feel as though the walls are closing in and the ceiling of the carriage is crushing him. I suffer from claustrophobia and in busy carriages can sometimes feel that panic so I really wanted to show how this felt. The set is surrounded with and framed by light boxes and the one right over Christopher’s head slowly lowers, fizzing with energy and electricity, crushing him into the floor. And then just when it feels that everything is lost, the Tube arrives at Willesden Junction and he has arrived!

Mark Haddon’s book is so full of energy and wit, funny and sad and we really wanted to make our show of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time have that same feel - it’s a rollercoaster ride of a story!

The UK & Ireland tour of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time begins on 20 November at Wembley Park Theatre, London.