Breaking the Code
Hugh
Whitemore
With the
recent Academy-nominated film The
Imitation Game, the
story of World War II Enigma code-breaker and computer pioneer Alan Turing is
now much more widely known than when Hugh Whitemore’s 1986 Breaking the Code premiered.
His play, however, brings to the 2015 audience aspects of Turing’s life
not told in the film and also feels more authentic and certainly intimate than does
the film (and does not create the film’s fiction storylines like a supposed spy
among the team of code-breakers).
Spanning
his teenage years until his death in 1954, Breaking the Code jumps with ease back and forth through Turing’s life and helps us to
get to know him in relation to several of the key players of his life: his Mom Sara, his boyhood friend
Christopher, his Enigma manager Dilly, his best girlfriend-for-life Pat, and
the hook-up Ron who leads to his demise.
Mr. Whitemore also tells us the story of Alan Turing in settings outside
the laboratory where he seems most comfortable in talking about himself. We return with him several times to his
boyhood home, his boarding school, and his house; and it is in these settings
along with across the desk from his boss and friend Dilly where Whitemore
allows Turing to share, even through strained moments of stuttering and long
pauses, his dreams, his secrets, and his deeply held beliefs (whether about
God, machines, or Dostoevsky).
What makes this play so wonderful is that the Einstein-brilliant, socially
awkward Alan Turning emerges as a human being and not just as an historical
figure. We are never far away from
his mathematical, scientific mind, given Jon Wai-keung Lowe’s effective and
versatile set whose walls and doors are blackboards covered in formulas and
complicated sketches. But in this
telling of his life, Whitemore emphasizes not so much the brain or discoveries
of Turing but the heart and personality of this shy, sensitive, stubborn, and
sometimes silly Alan. More
telling, he exposes in truthful, believable, and moving ways the gay life and
struggles of this historic hero.
As
Turing, John Fisher is totally believable for each of the ages and stages of
this man’s life. He is the
fingernail-chewing, shuffling boy whose adoring looks and knee touches tell us
of his love for his best school chum Christopher. He is the shrugging, defiant son who in one scene is so
exasperated with his mom and in another is totally devoted. He adeptly handles the penitent and guilty,
the suave and sexy, and the broken and desperate parts of his character. Mr. Fisher rises over and again to make
Alan Turning a person we walk away knowing and caring about.
The rest
of this troupe is also well-cast and well-directed (by Mr. Fisher, by the
way). Two are of particular
note. Val Henderson plays Dillwyn
(Dilly) Knox, Turing’s manager at the highly secretive Bletchly Park during the
War. His firm and official side is
balanced by a fatherly and understanding side that seems just right for the
nervous, slow-to-open-up Turing.
He is bookended neatly in his advice and worry about Alan with the same
coming from Celia Maurice as Sara, Turing’s mother. Her Sara Turing can scold and pick at her son’s irritating
habits (no matter his age), but she can also soften in a blink to offer him
genuine support, love, and guidance.
Everyone in the play has moments of hesitation and irritation with Turing
that we as audience can understand; but each also shows in their eyes, voices,
or casual touches/glances their varying attractions and sympathies that we too
are feeling.
The abrupt
ending is reminiscent of a famous apple-biting scene from Alan Turing’s Disney
favorite Snow White. Unfortunately, compared to the genuine, believable story
told up to that point, it comes off as too melodramatic and almost silly for
the true, tragic climax of Turing’s life.
Rating: 4
E’s
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