Review by: Paul Towers, 20/10/15
Breaking The Code by Hugh Whitemore
Leicester Drama Society
Leicester Little Theatre 19 – 24th October
2015
“a bravado performance from Paul Beasley”
Breaking The Code at Leicester’s Little Theatre this week is
the dramatic stage play inspired by Andrew Hodge’s book Alan Turing: The Enigma,
the source material for the recent film The Imitation Game starring Benedict
Cumberbatch.
This version, unlike the film, doesn’t shy away from the
subject of Turing’s downfall his homosexuality and the invidious inequity of the
Sexual Offences Act in the Fifties. This vile piece of legislation, viewed from
our more enlightened perspective, is shown to be the destructive force which
sadly ended the life of a genius who, had he lived beyond his 41 years, would
have achieved even greater things. As it is he can look down from wherever he
ended up and bask in the deserved glory of being the father of computing and
the person who was largely responsible for ending World War Two several years
early and thus saving thousands, if not millions of lives.
Paul Beasley as Alan Turing puts in a bravado performance
that not only captures Turing’s social awkwardness but perfectly illustrates
his brilliance and sense of exhilaration as he expounds on complex logical and
mathematical hypotheses.
Written as a series of flashbacks as Alan Turing
contemplates his final hour the narrative shines the spotlight on a series of
incidents which led the tormented genius to bite the self poisoned apple, Snow
White-like, that ended his life.
A talented cast of amateurs from the Leicester Dramas
Society come together and sprinkle much needed laughter into this tale of how
the man who saved the country at its ultimate time of peril was cruelly
betrayed by the legal system.
Breaking The Code is on at The Little Theatre until Saturday 24th October
First published in Western Gazette
(c) Paul Towers 20/10/15
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