Symbolism & Setting
Setting in a Play Without Realistic Scenery
In a conventional realistic play, setting is created through scenery, furniture, and props. Simon Stephens's play uses almost none of this. The graph-paper grid stage designed by Bunny Christie is the consistent environment throughout — it does not change when the action moves from Swindon to London. Instead, setting is created through lighting, projections, sound, and the movement of the ensemble. This theatrical choice means that the difference between Swindon and London is not shown through set changes but through how the stage feels: the pace of movement, the density of the ensemble, the quality of the light and sound.
For AO2 analysis, this means setting in the play is a theatrical construct rather than a realistic backdrop. When you write about how Stephens presents London or Swindon, you should focus on staging choices — how the production creates the feeling of each place — not just on what Swindon or London means thematically.
Swindon: The Known World
Swindon is Christopher's world: familiar, predictable, navigable. His home, his school, his routes between them. He knows the distances, the junctions, the colour of cars. Swindon represents a space of cognitive safety for Christopher — not because it is emotionally comfortable (it contains his father's lies and his mother's absence) but because he has mapped it, understood its patterns, and built his routines within it.
In the play's staging, Swindon is represented by relatively contained movement: the ensemble occupies predictable positions, the projections are of familiar domestic environments (the house, the street), and Christopher moves with confidence. The theatrical environment reflects Christopher's relationship to the space.
The same graph-paper stage represents both Swindon and London. The difference is created through staging: the pace and density of the ensemble, the quality of lighting and projection, and the movement choreography — not through realistic set changes.
London: Sensory Chaos and Independence
London is the play's space of maximum danger and maximum achievement. For Christopher, London is overwhelming: too many people, too many unpredictable stimuli, no familiar patterns to hold onto. The train journey to Paddington and the Underground sequence are the theatrical embodiment of this overload. Frantic Assembly's ensemble choreography creates a physical representation of the sensory world closing in on Christopher from every direction.
But London is also where Christopher proves what he can do. He navigates the Underground alone. He saves Toby from the tracks. He finds his mother's address. He travels further and copes with more than he — or the audience — knew he could. The play presents London not as simply hostile but as the testing ground where Christopher discovers his capability. The train journey to London is therefore the play's central symbolic sequence: it is where Swindon's safety is left behind and where Christopher's independence is forged.
The train journey is Christopher's literal and symbolic passage from dependence to independence. He has never travelled alone. The process of buying a ticket, navigating the station, boarding the train, and finding his mother's address is a journey from a child whose world is managed by adults to a fifteen-year-old who can manage his own. In theatrical terms, the ensemble's choreography of the train and Underground is the most complex and demanding staging in the play — reflecting the scale of what Christopher is attempting. His arrival in London is not triumphant: he is exhausted and overwhelmed. But he has done it. That fact — the achievement of arrival — transforms his understanding of what is possible.
Wellington: Death, Investigation, and Truth
Wellington the poodle is the play's inciting symbol. His death opens the action and gives Christopher's detective investigation its objective. But Wellington's symbolic significance extends beyond the murder mystery: he is the first link in the chain of hidden truths that the investigation uncovers. To find Wellington's killer, Christopher must discover the affair between his mother and Roger Shears, which leads him to the hidden letters, which leads him to understand that his mother is alive. Wellington's death is the key that unlocks everything.
Ed's killing of Wellington is also symbolically significant. He killed a dog — Mrs Shears's companion — in a moment of grief and rage when the relationship they had formed after Judy left him also collapsed. Wellington therefore represents collateral damage: an innocent creature caught in the wreckage of adult relationships. Ed's shame about killing Wellington is one of the reasons he maintains his lies: admitting he killed the dog would have forced him to explain why, and the explanation would have destroyed his version of reality.
Wellington's death opens the play and initiates the chain of discoveries. Ed killed him in rage and grief when his relationship with Mrs Shears ended — an act he concealed because admitting it would have unravelled his entire deception about Judy.
Sandy: Reparation and New Beginning
At the end of the play, Ed gives Christopher a golden retriever puppy called Sandy. This gift is carefully chosen: it is an animal, something Christopher can relate to without the complexity of human communication; it is a new life in place of a lost one (Wellington); and it is an act of love that does not claim to undo what Ed has done but offers something positive in its place.
Sandy cannot repair the damage of Ed's lies. The play is honest about this: Christopher and Ed's relationship is not simply restored. But Sandy represents the possibility of rebuilding: a new form of trust, created around a shared responsibility rather than around words. Ed understands Christopher's relationship to animals; this gift shows that he still knows his son, even after everything that has happened.
Language: Christopher's Precision and Others' Ambiguity
One of the play's central linguistic contrasts is between Christopher's precise, literal language and the ambiguous, metaphorical language of the adults around him. Christopher says: 'I find people confusing.' The primary reason is language: people say things they do not mean (metaphors, idioms, sarcasm, lies-of-omission) and expect others to decode the gap between literal meaning and intent. Christopher cannot do this. He takes everything literally.
Siobhan's language is the exception that proves the rule. She communicates precisely and unambiguously: she tells Christopher exactly what he is not allowed to do, and why. Her clear speech is the theatrical embodiment of what every relationship with Christopher requires — and what Ed, despite his love, consistently fails to provide.
In the play, Siobhan explains Christopher's difficulty with faces to the audience through her narration: she tells him that if you raise one eyebrow it can mean many different things — including 'I think what you said was very stupid'. This example, delivered through Siobhan's reading of Christopher's book, illustrates the problem of non-verbal communication for Christopher: a single physical gesture carries multiple possible meanings, none of them accessible to someone who reads only literal signals. The theatrical presentation of this in the play — Siobhan narrating while Christopher stands without recognising what she describes — is a precise theatrical image of the gap between Christopher's world and the neurotypical world around him.
The Symbolism of Mathematics
Mathematics is not just a subject Christopher studies — it is his primary language for engaging with certainty. 'Prime numbers is what is left when you have taken all the patterns away.' Mathematics offers Christopher what human communication cannot: rules that are consistent, proofs that are verifiable, answers that are definitively right or wrong. The play's engagement with mathematics — through the set design, projections, the staged exam, and the post-curtain scene — is therefore a sustained statement about what Christopher needs from the world: clarity, consistency, and demonstrable truth.
Effective drama analysis requires attention to stagecraft — considering not just what happens but how the playwright shapes the audience's response through every element of performance and text. In your exam response, identify specific techniques and explain their effect precisely.
Effective drama analysis requires attention to dramatic tension — considering not just what happens but how the playwright shapes the audience's response through every element of performance and text. In your exam response, identify specific techniques and explain their effect precisely.
Effective drama analysis requires attention to motif — considering not just what happens but how the playwright shapes the audience's response through every element of performance and text. In your exam response, identify specific techniques and explain their effect precisely.