Breaking the Code review – tribute to Alan Turing given a fascinating update

Royal & Derngate, Northampton
Hugh Whitemore’s 1986 play about the criminalised mathematician is revised, with a new epilogue by Neil Bartlett, to reflect his 2013 pardoning

When premiered in 1986, giving Derek Jacobi a key career role, Hugh Whitemore’s Breaking the Code was instrumental in spreading knowledge of the precocious brilliance of mathematician Alan Turing, whose brutal treatment by a homophobic and ungrateful state contributed to his suicide in 1954 aged 41.

Though drawing on Andrew Hodges’ 1983 biography, Alan Turing: The Enigma, Whitemore was ahead of several later plays and movies, including Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game (2014). So, for a long time, Whitemore and Jacobi’s portrayal of Turing formed his public image, which was inevitably tragic, given that he remained a convicted criminal for loving men and his theories had not yet been fully realised.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/ZMpWaf1

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