Cranford Review 2019

On
Monday 12th November 2018,
The National Theatre touring
company’s production of “The Curious
Incident of a Dog in the Night-Time”
came to Cranford. The whole of year 9 and
students from the Picasso Centre attended
the performance and were absolutely
enthralled by their imaginative retelling
of the story through physical theatre. The
students did some follow up work in English
and Creative Arts including reviewing the
production. Here are some examples of
their reviews.
Kerry Mulhair (Head of ASD and Centre
Manager - English teacher)
The
play is based on the book by Mark
Hadden. This is the story of a boy
named Christopher Boon, who appears to be on the
autistic spectrum. He is traumatised when he goes
into his neighbour’s garden to play with the dog,
Wellington, only to find out that the dog has been
stabbed and killed with a pitchfork. Christopher
takes it upon himself to find out ‘Who killed
Wellington?’ He lives with his dad and has been told
his whole life that his mother has died in hospital
due to a heart attack. While Christopher is in Mrs
Shears’ garden mourning for Wellington, Mrs Shears
walks out and sees Christopher in the garden next
to the dog and assumes that Christopher has killed
the dog. He claims that he didn’t but Mrs Shears
calls the police anyway. Christopher doesn’t like
anyone touching him so his parents hold up their
hand for Christopher to touch their hand as a way
of communicating with him. The policeman comes
to take Christopher away but when he goes to arrest
Christopher, he violently attacks the policeman.
While trying to find Wellington’s murderer,
Christopher begins writing his book. Christopher
takes it home and his dad finds it. His dad hides
it and Christopher goes looking for it and finds
letters from his mother in a box. The dates show that
these letters were written after his mother ‘died.’
When Ed (dad) comes home, he finds Christopher
shaken so much that he cannot move, he curls up
and vomits and groans. Ed cleans up Christopher
and confesses to lying about his mother’s death,
as she left him and Ed to go with Mr Shears, and
to killing Wellington after a heated argument with
Mrs Shears. Christopher decides to leave and go
to stay with his mother and Mr Shears as he has
lost all trust in his father and fears that Ed will kill
him too. Christopher goes to stay with his mother
and Judy Boone who invite him into her house, Mr
Shears gets drunk and tells Christopher that he is a
waste of space, which causes Judy to move back to
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