This revival and tour of Hugh Whitemore’s 1986 play, Breaking the Code about the brilliant mathematician and computer designer Alan Turing makes a welcome stop at the Oxford Playhouse.  Mark Edel-Hunt is outstanding as the polymath who had a persistent speech stammer.  The play looks at his early life, his work on solving the German Enigma Code and his work developing computers but also the difficulties he had as a gay man, when homosexuality was illegal.

He committed suicide aged 41 in 1954 and died from cyanide poisoning, a half eaten apple by his side.  There was no note and there were many who thought in view of the spying scandals around John Vassal and Guy Burgess, both gay men and with vulnerabilities of blackmail for gay men, that in view of his knowledge, Turing was murdered by the Security Services. 

The play covers about two decades of Turing’s life but he and his mother (Susie Trayling) also describe his first day at Hazelhurst Preparatory School, when he was nine years old.  This remembrance is important because it is the only example of the cold hearted mother’s description of affection towards her son. When he was 13, his first day of term at Sherborne School was during the General Strike and over two days he rode his bicycle 60 miles to get from Southampton to Dorset.