Curious Incident play opens on Broadway

Alex Sharp is held aloft in his role as teenage detective Christopher

A stage version of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time has opened on Broadway, to stellar reviews.

"Believe the buzz," Variety's critic said of the acclaimed National Theatre production, calling it "spectacular, like Cirque du Soleil with brains".

The New York Times' man agreed, saying it "one of the most fully immersive works ever to wallop Broadway".

The play tells of a teenage boy with Asperger's syndrome who investigates the death of a neighbour's dog.

Directed by Marianne Elliott, the Olivier-winning drama was adapted from Mark Haddon's best-selling 2003 novel.

It opened at the National in 2012, transferred to the West End the following year and had its opening night on Broadway on Sunday.

Time Out New York was among several publications to be impressed by Elliott's "dazzling and pulse-pounding" staging.

Others included the Hollywood Reporter, who said the show was "a tremendously exciting demonstration of the power of theatre".

Writing in USA Today, critic Elysa Gardner called the play "highly original [and] deeply engaging" and praised Elliott's "beautifully sensitive" direction.

Only Newsday's Linda Winer expressed a degree of reservation, concluding she had been more "filled with admiration" than "enraptured".

"The results brilliantly capture the sensory overload in the journey of a sweet, compulsive, instinctive and unpredictably violent child," she wrote.

"What the adaptation does not do, at least until the very end, is transcend the spectacle to dig out the emotional life that coexists with [his] confusing perceptions."

Alex Sharp plays the lead role of Christopher in the show, which continues at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

The London production, meanwhile, continues at the Gielgud Theatre until May 2015.