Viv Hardwick discovers how young actor Scott Reid is handling the high life of landing a top TV drama and a major theatre tour

SCOTT REID sees his career as far more than curious... at the age of 23 he feels somewhat fortunate to have a major theatre tour and one of the year’s most talked about TV dramas already under his belt.

The Glaswegian actor has moved from playing murder suspect Michael Farmer on Sunday nights to taking the lead as Christopher Boone in Simon Stephens’ adaptation of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which tours to Newcastle Theatre Royal at the end of this month (May).

“Michael Farmer is another interesting young man who has been charged with involvement in three girls disappearing. I feel very lucky because I also play a character called Methadone Mick in Still Game which is a huge programme in Scotland and was seen around the UK in October last year. I just feel that things are starting to flow for me and that’s what you really want as a young actor. It might sound like a broken record, but I do feel very blessed and lucky. I just keep working to stay at this level, because you never know when it’s going to stop,” says Reid.

He doesn’t entirely go along with the idea of being in the right place at the right time. “I think, sometimes, you hear that an actor has made it overnight and, actually, that’s totally not the case. I left drama school four years ago and I’ve steadily worked through the many levels in acting. Every time you break through that glass ceiling, there’s more rungs on the ladder to the next one. I believe that the knockbacks and the negativity that I had before just made me stronger and my armour sharper. I’ve been lucky with the people I’ve met, but I’ve worked God-damn hard to get here,” he adds.

How did Reid prepare himself to play the gifted but autistic hero who is suspected of killing a dog with a garden fork and must turn detective in spite of never going beyond the end of his road unaided.

“For me, Mark Haddon (the author) and Simon make it clear that this isn’t a case of someone with asperger’s or autism and I’m guided by things like Christopher doesn’t like to be touched and you hold your body in a different way if you don’t like physical contact. He doesn’t like certain numbers and colours and he’s got a very logical way of thinking. So, all his natural train of thought makes him a straightforward human being,” says Reid.

He likes the fact that the script and direction don’t define Christopher and that the audience will look to their own idea or experience to relate it back to their own lives. “If we completely remove these mental health tags before the audience comes to see the show then it’s a chance to watch the play unfold with no preconceptions. This is a special, bright and intelligent young man who can shine,” he says.

Reid read the book, but decided to operate with the production’s script because he felt that whatever was going to be put into the action and dialogue had a right to be there.

“You get a lot of information about Christopher in the first 20 minutes to half-an-hour, such as liking prime numbers, but not talking to strangers. When you apply those rules, that’s the research that I had to do rather than looking at young men with autism. I did meet a young autistic man and he was really bright and funny and extremely witty, but not scared to speak his mind, which was something that I really related to. As actors, we very much want to speak our minds, but we bite our tongues because we want to get employed again,” he says.

Reid also has to return to the mindset of a 15-year-old who is going through the difficult stages of puberty and learning about sex, marriage, divorce and death. “The way that I play Christopher changes every night because it depends what I get from dad, mum and my teacher. It varies. I was a 15-year-old boy who believed he was a man, believed he had all the answers about the world and knew exactly what he wanted to do and how he was going to do it. Actually, that’s really relatable to Christopher. I thought by 15 I had girls summed up and the world summed up, but you learn a lot about yourself as he get older,” he says.

Reid’s advice to his younger self now is: “Enjoy being young, don’t try and throw that time away because you can get away with murder. Cause more chaos. I think 15 is the most difficult age because it’s the end of being a child and the start of being someone who feels that they can handle going out clubbing.”

He regards the play, which is still running in the West End, as a modern classic and feels that the chance to play Christopher is special because in two or three years time he wouldn’t be right for the role.

“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for me and in the next ten to 15 years as the play is rekindled the competition and desire to play this part will be like a Shakespeare play. Under 30 you want to play Hamlet and at 60 you want to play Lear and I genuinely believe that Christopher is in that league. There isn’t anything else like it for an actor aged between 18 and 25. You don’t leave the stage and you have to be focused all the time and the challenge wasn’t something that I could turn down.”

  • The National Theatre production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time plays Newcastle Theatre Royal from Tuesday, May 30, to Saturday, June 10. Box Office: 08448-112121 or theatreroyal.co.uk