North

Curious Incident is about lots of things. Childhood, parenthood, love, perception. One of the phrases that gets the most use is "see your world differently". There's nothing like a long national tour to help you see your own country a little differently. Leeds, where we are this week, is a city in the North; right? Well, yes. Except that we travelled over 200 miles south to get to it. I remember feeling acutely, back in February, that anyone who thinks that Stoke-on-Trent is even faintly northern should try driving there from Newcastle upon Tyne, as I did. It took four hours. We stopped halfway, for lunch, in Wakefield.

There are a couple of points here. One is that, when you do this much travelling, you start to feel immune to distance (particularly if you fly or don't stare out of the train window; actually, as long as someone else is driving). In my experience, long distance travel is like long distance running: the key to getting through it is denial - a deliberate wool-pulling over the brain that prevents you from considering just how much distance lies ahead. No marathon runner in their right mind would say to themselves "1 mile down, 25 to go". That way madness lies. You look at the next mile, the next bend of the road, the next train stop. The end of the journey comes later (this may even have something to do with progress and lack of awe: something I touched on last week).

The other point is that this business is very London-centric. Time and time again, people ask me if this tour is coming anywhere near "town". Occasionally I rather facetiously respond that, yes, it's going to over thirty different towns. Just not London Town, which is of course what they assume the word means to everybody.

So, yes. If you live in London, Leeds is The North. Stoke's getting there. But, as they told us on the first day of rehearsal, this tour is about the National Theatre doing what it should be doing: being national. London theatregoers may think that this play reached its maximum interest and influence 2-3 years ago. I could show you around 10,000 people in each town we visit who would beg to differ.

Next week we'll be in Aberdeen. I knew that that's the furthest north I've ever been in the UK; but, looking at a map, it appears to be the furthest north that I will ever have been in the world. Hopefully I can think of something to say about it.

Kubrick

 

Back in December 2014, when we did our week-long technical rehearsal for Curious Incident, I got to see some of the play's special effects for the first time. Undoubtedly one of the most impressive was the scene where Christopher imagines he's flying through space, held aloft by a few of us, guided by Frantic Assembly: the sequence that is referred to in the company as 'Astroboy'. As I saw gigantic planets and galaxies projected on to the walls, the first thought I had was that it reminded me of Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Also, I happened to see the film again, in a new print, at the cinema just a day or so later. It had never occurred to me up until that point, but I started to see parallels between Christopher Boone and Stanley Kubrick. Initially, I thought this was because I was a little overloaded and saturated with the play that I was working on. You probably have to be that close to it to see an image like this and be reminded of your day job:

But then I started to give it a bit more thought. Kubrick, particularly in his later films, was nothing if not methodical. There's an almost mathematical precision - detractors would say a lack of emotion, a coldness - to his final six films, which span just over thirty years. Time and time again, his compositions show order, symmetry, balance: often perceived from a single, central perspective.

It reminds me of many of the stage compositions featured in this play: deliberately placed to reflect the order of Christopher's mind. Characters often enter the stage dead centre. As with many shots in Kubrick's films, you could draw a line through most scenes and see that the stage, and the characters on it, are almost perfectly symmetrical.

These are visual, stylistic elements; but, in both cases, it strikes me that that is how Christopher and Kubrick like it. Kubrick had a reputation for sometimes working better with machines than he did with actors. He doesn't strike me as a man who let emotion get in the way of his vision.

Earlier this year, I stumbled across the theory that Kubrick may have been on the autistic spectrum: perhaps even posthumously diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. Observers pointed to his relatively poor social skills, inflexibility and alleged obsessive nature.

The most interesting thing for me about 2001: A Space Odyssey, particularly with regard to Christopher Boone, is its lack of emotion. In a world of space travel, unseen alien forces and effortless contact, not once do the characters express awe. They express acceptance, understanding; a kind of refusal to be impressed by what technology can offer (this is the biggest thing he got right, for my money - in a world of smartphones and where anything is possible, we don't spend our time marvelling at what we can do: we just accept it in a cold, unquestioning manner).

Obviously, Kubrick never got to read or see Curious Incident. But I'd love to know what he would have thought. I think there might have been some common ground.

Stars

Photo: The Telegraph

Last night, following a show at the Sunderland Empire, Ed Grace and I watched the skies, determined to see some evidence of the Perseid meteor shower; whilst furtively polluting our view with the bright lights of our smartphones, nonchalantly trying to find out what the Perseid meteor shower actually is.

It was a pretty rewarding hour. We saw seven or so shooting stars slice through the North Eastern night sky: sometimes as clean as a laser beam; occasionally tired and haphazard, like a cigarette tip or a dying firework.

We had just finished our 241st show, which means that we have precisely 100 left. As I succumb to the relentless, accumulative exhaustion and occasionally hysterical mania of touring, I take quite a bit of solace from the words of Christopher Boone:

"When you look at the sky at night you know you are looking at stars, which are hundreds and thousands of light years away from you. And some of the stars don't exist any more because their light has taken so long to get to us that they are already dead - or they have exploded and collapsed into red dwarfs. And that makes you seem very small; and if you have difficult things in your life, it is nice to think they are what is called negligible - which means they are so small you don't have to take them into account when you are calculating something."

Ensemble

I was listening to a couple of radio interviews by two of our cast members today - John McAndrew and Joshua Jenkins - to publicise our current week at the Bristol Hippodrome; and they both mentioned a word that gets bandied around a lot with regard to this show: 'ensemble'.

Most directors like to use this word, because it implies that we're all in it together. But so often, it's just a lazy way to refer to a large cast. A proper ensemble production is something that many directors aim for, and few succeed at. The reason for this is simple: a true ensemble spirit means, to a degree, a surrender of ego; and, when you're talking about actors, that's very rare. For a true ensemble to work, actors need to be happy with the fact that they can be forgettable, even faceless. The production is the only star.

As I've implied, I've watched directors try and create this atmosphere a few times, and it often doesn't work. I was in one show where I was described as a member of the ensemble and yet wasn't invited to attend the first month of rehearsals - a contradiction in terms if ever there was one. To build a theatre company where actors can truly work together as equals is a rare thing; and it demands a director and a cast that are united in pursuing this vision. A couple of strong egos, or a director who simply doesn't know how to build a company, and the whole thing becomes a charade.

I'm very happy to say that I think this is genuinely an ensemble piece. Many of us play numerous parts throughout and there's a real team spirit. Of the fifteen actors, there's quite a wide spectrum of involvement in the play, but we're a team and we view it as such. We pop up here and there, sometimes as named characters, sometimes as bits of furniture; but it all fits together cohesively and democratically. When, in rehearsals, we were addressed as "ensemble", I didn't mind. Because, for once, we actually were.