You've only got a few more nights to see the Melville Theatre production of Hugh Whitemore's Breaking the Code, directed by Barry Park. Don't miss it.
This really is a splendid production, beautifully directed, flawlessly cast and fluidly staged.
It tells the story of Alan Turing, the British cryptographer who (arguably) won the Second World War for the Allies but was subsequently pilloried and humiliated for his sexuality. In the lead role, Thomas Dimmick gives a remarkable and moving performance, conveying by way of his physicality and delivery a sense of passionate discomfort and social unease, along with an impossibly deep love of the mathematics which is the only part of life he has got together. He differentiates Turing at different ages with subtlety. This really is acting of the highest quality.
Anna Head is wonderfully warm as his well-meaning, uncomprehending mother, and shows how important hair-arrangement can be to a role. Her hair made me smile twice! Patrick Downes is the Northern English policeman who uncovers Turing's secret. He plays the role with a solidity and nuance and decency that is a pleasure to watch.
Grace Edwards is lovely as a fellow cryptographer at Bletchley Park, the only one who really understands Turing and tolerates his foibles. Martin Forsey plays Turing's academic boss with a genial tweedy intelligence that covers up for a few secrets of his own.
Jack Riches, who has recently been seen in comic roles, delivers a strong performance as Turing's working-class lover, the catalyst for the play's crisis, moving from casual opportunism to self-serving anger.
In smaller roles, Nate Tonkin plays Turing's university friend who died young with a charm that justifies Turing's lifelong memories; Nicholas Mountain plays a government minister (with a forgettable name) whose accent at first seems mannered - but that's how some men actually spoke at the time. Listen to recordings. Jamie Brooker is a Greek youth who drapes himself languidly across the stage like a young Saint Sebastian.
In my review of Barry Park's production of Hansard at Garrick Theatre I wrote:
This links the play to a remarkable sequence of plays that Barry has directed over the last five years. Taken together they represent a sort of informal historical pageant that covers the development of modern sexual attitudes - the early sixties (The York Realist); the late sixties (The Boys in the Band); the early eighties (The Normal Heart); the late eighties (Lisbon Traviata & Hansard); the nineties (Beautiful Thing). And that's not to mention adjacent plays from earlier periods by Coward and Rattigan. It has been a pleasure to watch this sequence play out, and I am sure more is to come.
This play is certainly a worthy addition to that sequence...
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