A strong dose of Shakespeare does leave one pining for a blast of the disordered modern world. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at the Cottesloe promised respite after my children said they could not face another play likely to feature the words, "Fie thee, Sir." Mark Haddon's blessedly contemporary novel about a boy with Asperger's syndrome seeking to make sense of his fractured family is a brilliantly-written exploration, not only of mental disability, but the peculiarities of ordinary life we take for granted, from the diction of policemen to avoidance strategies of crowds in Tube stations. 

All of this is strange and disturbing to Christopher (Luke Treadaway), a maths prodigy who lives in a state of confusion about human emotions. He sets out to solve a suburban mystery involving the next-door neighbour's dog and a pitchfork. Naturally, Christopher is on to something and the plot unravels as his hapless father (Paul Ritter) seeks to keep the truth about his mother's infidelity and absence from the boy. Nicola Walker, who plays Ruth in the BBC's Spooks, is an overwrought mum who talks in the debased psychobabble of midmarket magazines, "I just couldn't handle it" and "It's pushing me over the edge" being her default proclamations. Marianne Elliott's production is a bit gloopy at times and Niamh Cusack as Christopher's perpetually saintly teacher can grate. But Haddon's clear eye for the lives of what Ed Miliband would call the "squeezed middle", under pressure from a child's disability and their own emotional woes, redeems most of that. At 2 hours 40 minutes, however, The Curious Incident is way too long. Is there an Equity clause stipulating that most plays must come out at around this length? Shakespeare could take us through the entire human condition in that time — and even he needs a bit of a shearing on occasion.