How Playwright Simon Stephens Took A Curious Incident From The Page To The Stage

It wasn't long after its publication in 2003, that Mark Haddon's novel The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time found its way to the top of virtually every bestsellers list in the English-speaking world. And there it stayed, and in fact, continues to stay, a book-club favourite, studied on school curriculums, prominently displayed in stores as a bookshop staple, some 15 years later.

This wasn't Haddon's first success. His previous works of fiction for children and young people (18 in total, before The Curious Incident) had been respectably popular. He'd also been commissioned a number of times by the BBC as a screenwriter.

But it was, by quite a significant margin, his biggest success.

So, what was different about this book? Like other narratives by Haddon, there was plenty of suspense and excitement to keep a reader hooked. The story followed a young boy on the hunt for the killer of a neighbour's dog, in a quirky suburban whodunit that developed into a touching family drama. What stood The Curious Incident apart from other works in Haddon's canon, however, was its hero: the maths loving Christopher Boone who, although never specifically described as such, has Asperger's Syndrome.

There's nothing to suggest that Haddon's choice of protagonist (or his neurodiversity) was in any way strategic, but it did seemingly deliver him a megahit on a scale that most writers can only dream of. In addition to the significant commercial success of the book, the critical response was almost unanimously glowing, and only a few months after hitting the shelves it was awarded the coveted Whitbread Book Of The Year gong.  

But The Curious Incident also attracted some controversy. While the text itself never mentions the word Asperger's, sleeve jackets from the first few editions made the connection explicitly. Haddon later moved to distance himself from this fact, as cynical accusations surfaced claiming his understanding of the condition was sensationalist at best.

However, it's worth noting that one of the book's most remarkable feats is that it offers a lens on the world that is entirely Christopher Boone's. The book's voice never deviates from this singular perspective, and in this unclouded focus, it offers a glimpse of a human experience that many people might find impossible to personally imagine.

"What people adored about Christopher in the book, is his capacity to see things in the world that are truthful, and it's a perspective that is so startling, and so right."

The backlash faced by Haddon is one that theatre and filmmakers are familiar with. The idea of "minstrelling" has taken on new meaning in recent years, extending beyond the now universally unacceptable practice of black-face. Today, it also encompasses aspects of disability. In 1989, Dustin Hoffman won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance in Rain Man, a film in which he delivers a portrayal of autism that today might be considered deeply offensive. And yet, in the case of The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, a curious catch-22 exists.

Haddon's book doesn't specifically diagnose Christopher Boone. So, when acclaimed British playwright Simon Stephens was invited to adapt the blockbusting novel for the stage, he was faced with an intriguing dilemma: should his account of Christopher be authentic to the book or to that of an authentically Asperger's experience?

"That is the most important question," Stephens says. "It's something myself and the whole artistic team wrestled with artistically from the play's inception. And the issue of representation is tremendously sensitive to all kinds of people throughout the world. But in this case, my specific responsibility was to dramatise Mark Haddon's fictional creation. That might sound like a cop-out, but at every point, I had to remember that touchstone: what did Mark do?"

Premiering in 2012 at National Theatre in London, Stephens' stage iteration certainly lived up to its source material's legacy. It became one of the most successful plays in British theatre history, scooping a record-breaking seven Olivier Awards the following year - a crown that has only just been snatched by Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, which picked up nine gongs in 2017. 

Much like Haddon's novel, Stephens' depiction of Boone didn't place him in a hostile and overwhelming world where it might be easy for this character to appear vulnerable. Rather it saw him in a world of Christopher's own making, in a space that he controls, much like Haddon's prose. "I think it was vitally important not to define Christopher by his diagnosis, but by the complexity of his personality," Stephens explains. 

This rang true in The Music's review of the Australian premiere, earlier this year in Melbourne, which noted: "Christopher Boone's inner world is all [in this staging], his actions clearly connected to rational thought and relatable need. The result is a production that moves without being mawkish. Even as we see the frustration and concern of the adults around him, the emotional truths of both Christopher and the halo of other characters he encounters are able to coexist in beautifully judged counterpoint."

And in fact, it seems the crucial x-factor that has allowed this novel's evolution as a stage play to be so successful, has been Stephens' confidence in the medium of theatre itself and its ability to transport an audience. "I am often asked about the idea of 'authenticity' and I feel like that is a very problematic word when you're talking about the theatre. Our work isn't about recreating authentic life, it's about creating a dramatised experience. So, I never really see the burden of authenticity because I don't think authenticity is useful in that context," he says. "And what people adore about Christopher in the book, is his capacity to see things in the world that are truthful, and it's a perspective that is so startling, and so right. He sees the folly of people in a way that is inarguable, and that we recognise immediately. That's a very beautiful thing without being manipulative. That's what was so important in the book, and so vitally important that we got right when we brought Christopher into the theatre."

The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time plays from 12 Jun at QPAC, Brisbane and from 4 Jul at Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney