The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

About the show

The play involves a significant reworking of the source material. Rather than present the story in the first-person narrative as the original novel did, the play is presented as a reading of Boone's own writing, read aloud in segments by his teacher. Set in Swindon and London, the story concerns 15-year-old Christopher John Francis Boone, a mathematical genius with an autism spectrum disorder, although his condition is never specified in the play. The titular curious incident is the mystery surrounding the death of Wellington, his neighbour Mrs. Shears' poodle, after Christopher finds the dog speared with a garden fork. While trying to discover who killed Wellington, he encounters resistance from many neighbours, but mostly from his widowed father, Ed. Christopher argues to himself that many rules are made to be broken, so he continues to search for an answer. During his investigation, Christopher happens across letters from his mother, Judy, dated after her alleged death. Ed admits that Judy is alive and living in London with their neighbour with whom she had an affair; he had fabricated the story about her dying from a heart attack two years prior. He also admits that he killed Wellington in a fit of fury after an argument with Mrs. Shears. Distraught and fearing for his life, Christopher heads to London to find and live with his mother, traveling by himself for the first time in his life. He finds the journey overstimulating and stressful, but eventually succeeds and is welcomed by his mother. His ambitions lead him back to Swindon, where he wants to sit an A Level mathematics exam. Christopher achieves the best possible result and gradually reconciles with his father. In a short scene after the curtain call, Christopher reappears to brilliantly solve his "favourite question" from the mathematics exam.