This brand new touring production of Simon Stephens’ adaptation from Mark Haddon’s novel opened to much anticipation at Birmingham Rep in September. Marianne Elliott’s production for The National Theatre opened in 2012 and has seen three tours in the UK alone, along with numerous appearances globally, so the new staging under the direction of Ned Bennett has some extremely big shoes to fill.
Chris Boone (a boy in the source novel but played as a girl in this version) is a 15 year old with ASD, who lives in Swindon with her father Ed. Her mother Judy is absent from the outset of the story, and Ed has explained that she died of a heart attack in hospital. The discovery of a neighbour’s dog lying dead on the lawn one morning sets in motion a quest for truth, in which Chris discovers a great deal more than she intends to, and her entire world is turned upside down. The original novel sees Chris writing her day to day experiences down in the form of a book with the encouragement of her teacher Siobhan, and the premise of Stephens’ stage adaptation is to see Chris’s teachers turn the written words into a play.
The immediate first observation as the curtain rises is that Eleanor Bull’s stage design is very pared-back by comparison with the hi-tech 3D graph that Bunny Christie gave us, but it soon becomes clear that this huge, blank cyclorama both enables this production to expand easily onto different sizes of stage (including the vast space of the Empire) and it throws us straight into the semi-real world that is being created by the text.
Chris’s life is kept stable by order and routine, and the thrust of the play is very much to let us inside her mind as she navigates first her own neighbourhood and then, after a major meltdown of the relationship with her father, the mind-blowing confusion of travelling to London by herself, in search of her mother.
Bull’s set becomes a canvas on which every waking thought is painted, and the objects and obstacles of the world are represented as they might be if played out by Chris’s teachers and classmates. The whole stage becomes a soft play area, with a skipping rope representing the concentration required to plan every step forward in the outside world. At one point, coinciding with her arrival in London, the world turns into a ball pool populated entirely by bright yellow – Chris’s least favourite colour.
The idea of staging everything in a metatheatrical world as though it is being recreated in school is a very clever move, which possibly makes this telling more accessible to a younger audience. It is worth mentioning here that I was unable to attend the previous evening’s press performance and so saw a schools’ matinee the following day instead. It was telling, especially for a piece that runs to 2½ hours, that the audience mostly made up of very large school parties were among the most attentive I have ever seen, and it was abundantly clear that it was engaging with them all spectacularly well.
Chris is played by Alex Keenan with Imi Price as alternate in the role, and Price, who is making her professional stage debut in this production, performed on Wednesday afternoon. Price delivers a spectacular performance in this central character, and it is good to see an autistic actor cast in the part.
Joe McFadden and Charlie Brooks are Ed and Judy Boone, and they both cleverly negotiate the twists of the text in which they act alternately as they see themselves and also as they are seen by Chris. Bridgette Amofah is Siobhan, who is both a teacher and confidante for Chris, and takes the leading part in the narrative style delivery of the story. This reading in particular seems to highlight the importance of a trusted teacher in the life of a child whose trust in their parents is shaken to the core.
Bennett’s direction, aided by movement director Jennifer Jackson, highlights the way the play sits between reality and play-acting, and once you immerse yourself in the universe that the staging creates it becomes remarkably powerful. The final pages of the story, as a new sort of order is restored to Chris’s life and she looks forward to the future, are genuinely moving.
This is an impressive re-staging of a story that has swiftly become a modern classic, and is bound to gain a lot of new readers for the novel as well as offering a new viewpoint for existing fans.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is at Liverpool Empire until Saturday 7th November before continuing its tour, with dates currently booking through to July 2027.
Star rating: 4 stars
Production photography by Pamela Raith
Imi Price as Chris and the cast of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time 
Alex Keenan as Chris and the cast of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
This review was originally written for publication by Good News Liverpool
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