The most notable moment in Mark Haddon's young adult novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time occurs when Christopher Boone, a 15-year-old on the autism spectrum, leaves his home in Swindon for London. After a challenging train journey, he arrives at Paddington station and becomes overwhelmed. The book's text transforms into a variety of fonts and type sizes to convey the information overload: announcements, shop signs, and advertisements all demanding attention. This sense of overwhelming noise, a sensory experience involving products, people, and places, is the central theme of Ned Bennett’s ambitious new staging of Simon Stephens’ adaptation for Birmingham Rep and Melting Pot. The stage design, created by Eleanor Bull, is a bare, white space that resembles an oversized studio. It alternates between clean geometric lines—such as a row of pastel-colored houses forming a picture-book street—and detailed high-definition projections. Hayley Egan’s video design presents everyday objects—like a wrench, a tampon, and a wooden spoon—for detailed examination, as if they were in an illustrated hardback book. This presentation makes the familiar seem strange and complex. The busy percussive score by Giles Thomas adds to the sensory overload, while a multitasking ensemble moves in and out, surreal and playful, switching from police officers to tumblers. At the vulnerable center of the production, a gender-swapped version of Christopher (played by Alex Keenan) arrives at Paddington and is caught in a storm of bouncing balls—all yellow, her disliked color, all displaying advertising slogans and attempting to knock her off course. It is a clever theatrical representation of Haddon’s literary concept: Christopher against an incomprehensible world. To board a tube train, she must master a skipping rope, as if navigating the city were similar to passing through an adventure playground. With elbows raised high and head tilted, Keenan captures Christopher’s combination of confusion and cheerfulness. She is puzzled by human interactions, yet confident in her love of mathematics and science. In a high-energy professional debut, Keenan charms with her enthusiasm enough to carry the audience through the distressing moments when Christopher turns inward or reacts strongly as facts and emotions become too much to process. Fun and inventive, Bennett’s staging has the dreamlike quality of something created before our eyes. Sex, death, and infidelity are addressed with factual sensitivity as we celebrate Christopher’s success in overcoming adversity. The production will tour until 28 May.