Breaking the Code

Written by Hugh Whitemore

Directed by Les Zetlein

Dates 6^th – 8^th then 13^th – 15^th August

Alan Turing (1912-1954) was a brilliant logician, mathematician and cryptanalyst who is mostly known for his wartime work in which he played a key role in breaking the German Enigma code (among others). However, there is much more to this complex and conflicted man. Hugh Whitemore’s biographical play moves back and forwards in time, covering his formative years, his work at Cambridge University where he developed the idea of a computing machine that could do any task asked of it, his time at the Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park, his personal life and loves, and his fall from grace after the war when he fell foul of the law because of his naivety and inability to lie.

Turing’s seminal work laid the foundation for today’s computers and artificial intelligence. Breaking the Code explores the human side of his life, and how he broke the code—in more ways than one.