Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Â
Tim Teeman
Â
Alex Sharp is 25, fresh out of Juilliard, and suddenly the hottest star on Broadway, receiving raves for his role in ‘The Curious Case of The Dog In The Night-Time.’
If Alex Sharp is in the middle of a “dream come true,†as he puts it, he is also suffering for it. When the 25-year-old British star of Broadway hit The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time takes his seat in the midtown Manhattan restaurant what is immediately apparent is the mauve-colored bandage covering Sharp’s left palm and wrist.
His Broadway debut has been universally acclaimed, and audiences electrified, by his performance as Christopher, a 15-year-old English teenager with Asperger’s syndrome, who discovers a neighbor’s dead dog, and becomes determined to discover how it died.
The words “Asperger’s†and “autism†are never mentioned in Simon Stephens’ brilliant adaptation of Mark Haddon’s 2003 novel, in which the audience is plunged, like Christopher, into a world of clashing sounds, images, and movement.
Bunny Christie’s stage design—a stunning matrix of lights, tracks, maps, and grids—means Curious Incident is, as the New York Times’ rave review put it, “one of the most fully immersive works ever to wallop Broadway.â€
The injuries are the inevitable result of Sharp’s deeply committed performance: in Marianne Elliott’s enveloping production, he clambers, jumps, leaps, crouches, literally throws himself around a stage that convincingly transforms from an English suburban street, to high-speed train, a terrifying London Underground station, and the teeming, jostling streets of the British capital.
All the time Sharp, wittily and movingly, takes us inside Christopher’s mind, as it struggles to impose order—and keep its owner safe—as the world around him clatters and moves. He cogitates maths problems, and sees things absolutely literally, in a world that is far from orderly and layered with meanings we are all too aware of.
Â
Read in Full:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/07/the-brit-who-stormed-broadway.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thedailybeast%2Farticles+%28The+Daily+Beast+-+Latest+Articles%29
Related