A two person cast, some fine singing and acting, and a lot of research went into bringing the tragic, eventful and world-changing life of Alan Turing to life at the Hub at St Mary’s.
With Joe Bishop playing the title role and Zara Cooke playing Andrea, a modern day biography writer, as well as many other roles including Turing’s fiancee Joan, the script was rich in detail with dialogue that crackles and songs that are both sensitive and tuneful.
The play asked a lot of the two actors, but they both delivered fine performances in a show that lasted more than 80 minutes, with no interval.
With two timelines – Turing in his lifetime between 1912 and 1954 and Andrea in the modern day – we follow the two characters, one telling the story of the other.
Much is made of Turing’s brilliance as a mathematician, his study of the Fibonachi sequence, and his single minded approach to his work at Bletchley Park as one of the scientists and mathematicians working to break the enigma code, and in turn saving the lives of many millions of people during the Second World War.
There are episodes of Turing’s life at school, where the death of a childhood friend from TB affected him deeply. The audience learns of his time as a brilliant but socially awkward student at Cambridge and later at Yale, as well as his time cycling through Germany and his running career – but there is also a deep melancholy to both the character and the play, regarding his homosexuality and how the times he lived in would not allow him to legally live the life he should have.
The tragic ending of his life in prison at the age of 42 meant that a happy ending was never going to happen.
This brilliant, but largely unknown man changed the world, as one of the first inventors of the computer, with a study of the use and dangers of artificial intelligence. An element of his life and thoughts that will still be felt for many years to come.
