“About this young engineer chap you’ve got
working with you –
tongues are beginning to wag ...”
Breaking the Code
by
Hugh Whitemore
Newcastle
People’s Theatre
Tuesday 13 to Saturday 17
February 2018
This LGBT History Month the People’s Theatre
are delighted to bring their audiences Breaking the Code, the important and
thought-provoking true story of brilliant mathematician Alan Turing.
At
the height of the Second World War, Turing was a key figure in breaking the
top-secret Enigma code used by the Nazis. His work is thought to have
significantly shortened the war.
In
the aftermath of victory, Turing returned to academic life and the development
of the modern computer. But his dreams were left tragically unfulfilled as his
private sexual life fell afoul of social attitudes in 1950s Britain.
Hugh
Whitemore’s gripping drama intertwines Turing’s prickly genius with the
authoritarian regime of Bletchley Park and his deepest personal desires with the
hidebound prejudice of post-war Manchester.
Knowing
what we do of Turing’s sad fate turns this tender portrait of an autistic
prodigy into a modern tragedy.
“It's not
breaking the code that matters – it's where you go from there”
When
Whitemore wrote Breaking the Code in
1986, Turing was something of an enigma himself: an obscure figure known only
to scientific historians. In recent years, however, Turing has been officially
pardoned by the Queen, become the subject of an Oscar-winning film, two operas,
and an electronic Prom devised by the Pet Shop Boys.
Although
the play has been described as oddly funny at times, and with nervous laughter
in the air at others, the sadness is never far away.
This
work about a gay martyr moves the audience because its protagonist never thinks
of himself as one. When the story of a badgered nonconformist is told as a tale
of innocent self-assertion rather than maudlin self-pity, one finds not a
saintly victim, but an unlikely hero at centre stage.
Photos: Paula Smart
Tickets:
Tickets
costing £13.50 (Concessions £11) are available from the box office 0191 265
5020 or online from www.peoplestheatre.co.uk.
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