WHAT a pleasure it is to be writing those words. Curious Incident etc. National Theatre. York.

Often York has to wait its turn behind Leeds, Sheffield and Bradford, but thankfully, the NT is taking Simon Stephens’s play – winner of seven Olivier awards – to 31 cities on its first tour and so the Grand Opera House is on the list.

This will be a rich year for “proper” theatre at the GOH; One Man, Two Guvnors and Tom Conti in Twelve Angry Men will follow, and while normally it would be folly to call Curious Incident the “show of the year” in January, what can match it on the evidence of seeing last Thursday night’s performance at Hull New Theatre?

Mark Haddon’s source novel has become a school set text but although the central character is a 15-year-old boy with a brilliant mind, it is that brilliant mind and its extraordinary representation by the National Theatre that gives Stephens’s adaptation much wider appeal.

The fearful yet fearless boy in question is Christopher Boone (Joshua Jenkins), who can work out A-level Maths but is ill-equipped to work out everyday life. Novelist Haddon never called him autistic or attributed Asperger Syndrome to him, but Christopher does not like to be touched, is incapable of lying, can count binary numbers to infinity and has powers of logic beyond conventional reasoning or normal patterns of behaviour.

Such frankness and original thinking gives his bright yet naive narration humour and wonderment. Part of the skill of Stephens’s script and Marianne Elliott’s direction is that we travel both inside and outside Christopher’s viewpoint, as he goes against his father’s will by “doing detective work” to find out who killed neighbour Mrs Shears’ dog with a garden fork.

Christopher prefers to follow his own path, however unsafe he may feel amid the chaotic cacophony, on a bigger journey of discovery that combines abnormal intellect with bewildering, baffling new experiences. Not least because all around him, except for his special needs teacher Siobhan (Geraldine Alexander), let him down, especially his father (Stuart Laing).

The journey will take him from Swindon to London, on to a train on his own for the first time, into the turbulence of a Tube station, and it is in these scenes that Curious Incident is at its peak.

Bunny Christie’s designs and in particular Finn Ross’s video projections and Paule Constable’s lighting draw you into the world as Christopher sees it, enhanced by Frantic Assembly duo Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett’s movement for the ensemble in tandem with Christopher. Vital, too, are Ian Dickinson’s disorientating, threatening soundscapes and Adrian Sutton’s uplifting music, everything tied together by Jenkins’s riveting portrayal of a boy with a beautiful mind in constant search of a safe place.

• The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, National Theatre on tour, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york

Also Leeds Grand Theatre, August 25 to 29; 0844 848 2700 or leedsgrandtheatre.com