The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time at the Apollo Theatre

I went to see 'The Curious Incident' the other night, not really knowing what to expect other than it's been getting rave reviews. It was first staged at the National Theatre before moving to the West End so it's obviously got something going for it.

It's an odd tale adapted from a book, the tale of a 15 year old boy somewhere on the autistic spectrum who hates to be touched but who loves maths and space. He finds a neighbours' dog killed with a garden fork through its body and decides to find out who killed the dog.

That leads him on a journey to discover that his mother isn't really dead and that his dad's been hiding a secret stash of letters from his mum to him. He overcomes his fear of other people and noise by travelling to London from Swindon to find his mother and returns to Swindon to take his maths A-Level. His reconciliation with his dad comes when he's given a dog (ok, the cutest puppy I've seen in a long time). It's an oddly compelling play that doesn't really go anywhere but we do get an insight into the lad's life and autism.

The staging is really quite novel and seemed to be inspired by an old Human League set with lights coming on and off when needed. I suspect it's meant to help define aspects of the lad's brain firing when he's thinking and experiencing things or some such. I particularly liked the depiction of the escalator to the Tube at Paddington Station. You never know what might be the next part of the stage to light up. I thought it was great fun and was almost a character in its own right.

Throughout the play the lad lays out a toy train set, gradually spreading across the stage, adding buildings and trees to make it more realistic. At the end the train and the set comes to life, choo-chooing around the stage and, as the buildings wake up and start to glow I realised it was a depiction of the journey by train from Swindon to London, complete with London monuments. Very clever.

I liked the optimistic ending when the lad gets his maths A-level result of an A* (naturally) and he goes on to say he'll take another exam next year, go to university and get a first class degree and have his own flat. Somehow, in his own erratic way, I think he'll mange it.