MADC successfully decodes the complex relationships and ascetic lifestyle of a noble scientist.

A couple of hours is rarely sufficient to portray the full breadth of somebody’s life, making biographies particularly difficult to dramatise efficiently. Hugh Whitemore’s 1986 play Breaking the Code, based on Andrew Hodges’ book, Alan Turing: the Enigma, proved to be a valiant attempt at resolving this difficulty.

Produced by MADC and staged till last weekend at Blue Box Theatre, this adaptation of the life of one of the most significant scientists to have shaped the outcome of World War II, was a very interesting piece of theatre.

Director Stephen Oliver, who was also responsible for light and sound design, and designed the set with Marco Mallia, was fortunate to have a solid cast for this performance. Newcomer to the Maltese stage Devin Kordt-Thomas, played Alan Turing, whose story is told in retrospect as he speaks to Police Inspector Mick Ross (Edward Thorpe).

Thorpe’s implacable manner made the police inspector in the post-war setting highly credible and actually very authentic in his portrayal of a man set to investigate a burglary, which eventually becomes an investigation of gross indecency on the part of Alan Turing, who initially reported the burglary. The draconian legal measures against homosexual acts in the 1940s and ’50s are explored through the often very sanguine conversations bet­ween Turing and Ross.

Kordt-Thomas made a strong attempt at a neutral Received Pronunciation accent in portraying Turing, but excelled at the honest portrayal of a man whose intellectual genius and mathe­matical capabilities were countered not by his homosexuality, which did not discomfit him in the slightest, but with his social ineptitude and eccentric bluntness, which may hint that what he kept hidden and well-managed was a shade of autism. The play alludes to this speculation but never makes it clear; his atheism and his moral logic seem to point to this too. His relationships with those closest to him were intense.

A very interesting piece of theatre

His teenage companion and first love, Christopher Morcom, was portrayed in flashback by young Kyle Borg, in a mature and studied performance; while his rather distant relationship with his meddlesome but devoted mother Sara, was played by the inimitable Isabel Warrington in good form.

Franco Sciberras gave a solid performance as his old boss at Bletchley Park, Dilwyn Knox, a gruff man who nevertheless wishes him well, and whose appearances also occur in flashback. This achronological technique worked very well and succeeded in putting across several key aspects of Turing’s life.

Appearing both in flashback and his present-day and final days is Turing’s lifelong friend, Pat Green, played by Cassandra Spiteri. Pat, one of the Bletchley Girls, kept up her friendship with Turing after he informs her of his homosexuality in a rebuff to her romantic advances and turns out to be a source of comfort to him.

Isabel Warrington played the part of Sara.

Spiteri, also a relative newcomer, did a great job in providing Pat with the gentleness and likeability as well as the wit that a lively intellect like hers, a woman struggling in a man’s world, needed so much. Brendan Thearle was the gruff Ron Miller, Turing’s lover whose suppressed sexuality leads him to treat Turing rather poorly.

Kordt-Thomas, gave a portrayal of Turing as unflappable and resigned to his situation, if anything, in order to focus on more significant scientific matters. The consequences of Turing’s arrest and the conditions of his release, including chemical castration, may well have been exacerbating factors in his early demise, which was from an overdose, accidental or otherwise.

Breaking the Code was not the shortest of plays, its classic length could well have led it to drag on, but the cast’s strong pace and dynamic led to a measured poise which made this production well worth watching.