The neurotypical masses might have an unhealthy obsession with savant-syndrome, but Christopher Boone — the young protagonist of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime — isn’t wrong to compare himself to Sherlock Holmes. When he discovers a murdered neighborhood canine and is suspected of the crime, the mathematically gifted teen confronts his social difficulties to solve the case and challenge his limits by constructing his world as a murder mystery novel. The Tony Award-winning stage adaptation of the best-selling 2003 novel imagines Boone’s investigation diary as a play-within-a-play.
Unlike many depictions of autism spectrum disorders, Curious Incident has been largely well-received by mental health commentators. Boone’s unnamed disability isn’t a chilling superpower like Benedict Cumberbatch’s “Aspergerish” Sherlock of BBC fame, nor is it a grotesque eccentricity as with Kenneth Branagh’s obsessive compulsive portrayal of Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express (2017). In the Public Theater’s production, Preston Straus plays the 15-year-old sleuth, while Kate Glasheen narrates his story as Boone’s teacher Siobhan along with support from the ensemble.
$10-$35, 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays through January 19, The Public Theater of San Antonio, 800 W. Ashby Pl., (210) 733-7258, thepublicsa.org.
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This article appears in The Drink Issue 2019.