Mastermind, code breaker and maverick - the inspiring story of Alan Turing

Here, director Jesse Jones (artistic director of Northampton’s Royal & Derngate) and Mark Edel-Hunt, who plays Alan Turing (a brilliant mathematician, best known for his work at Bletchley Park, breaking the Enigma code used by Nazi Germany in World War II), discuss the play – and why Turing’s story is as inspiring and relevant as ever.

What can audiences expect from Breaking the Code?

Jesse Jones: It’s a portrait of somebody we associate with having done one main thing – breaking the Enigma code – but it delves into his life and his relationships in a very human way. It’s funny at times. It’s heartbreaking at times. And it really does the job of making him human. It breaks the code of him a little bit, I suppose.

Where did this project start from – what was the impetus to do a play about Alan Turing?

Jones: I’ve been artistic director for two years, but I was resident director [at Royal & Derngate] 10 years ago and a producer at the time passed me the play (written in the 1980s by Hugh Whitemore’) and I fell in love with it. It is an exquisitely well-written play. Also, being in Northampton, you go past Bletchley often. So it lodged itself in my brain as a play that I was really excited to do, and when I reread it, it felt like it had an important story to tell, around how the state tells people how they can exist, and the conversation around intelligent machines.

Do you think Turing’s life and work still deserves to be better known?

Mark Edel-Hunt: For me, while homophobia exists, we have to keep telling these stories.

That’s one reason why we have to keep shouting about it. And the other thing is we are living in a world where AI is hurtling towards us – and Alan Turing was the first person to really daydream about a computer that could think for itself. AI is going to profoundly change what ‘thinking’ is – and being around Alan might help us start to understand what AI might mean, and how we should handle it.

What do you think Turing would have made of us all having a computer with AI on it in our pocket?

Jones: I think he probably would’ve said, I told you so! There’s a passage in the play that says, ‘by the year 2000, I don’t think it would be unusual to speak about an intelligent machine that can think and feel’. So he might even go, what took you so long?

Edel-Hunt: He was excited by the idea of creating a machine that could think for itself, and so you would think chat GPT or whatever would be exciting to him. On the flip side, as I get to know Alan a bit better, he was also someone who was really energised and delighted by the deliciousness of human thinking. And in a sense, AI’s helping us not to think anymore; it’s going to do the thinking for us. And I wonder how he would feel about that.

The story of the cracking of the Enigma code is remarkable – but the play is also so much about Turing’s personal life. How are you finding the balance of those?

Edel-Hunt: If Alan was sat here, he’d be the first one to remind us that he didn’t do it on his own: I think he’d be dismayed at the idea of being heralded as the man who single-handedly broke the Enigma code. And he believed passionately in his work, but he wasn’t interested in celebrity.

Has there been anything that you’ve discovered about Turing while working on this that surprised you?

Jones: I think because of some previous interpretations of him, [I was surprised by] his cheekiness, his charm, his sexiness… He’s really funny. He’s really direct, and sometimes rude. But that’s the picture of a human being, and that’s beautiful.

Edel-Hunt: There’s a lazy assumption that because he’s good at maths, he’s a geek and he’s socially incapable. And actually, when you read his letters, he’s witty, he’s quick, he’s engaging. And also, he’s sexually active: he is a man who has sex with other men, he’s not just sat in some dusty room. So that was a fun thing to discover.

In the play, Turing is unapologetic about being gay, and has a very rational attitude towards his sexuality. Do you think that will speak to us today?

Jones: I really do. It takes incredibly brave people to speak their truth for us to be able to move the goalposts of how accepted we can all be in society. It’s not easy for Turing to live the way that he wants to, but he cannot pretend to be something else. And that’s a lesson there – that is an important thing for all of us to hold onto.

Edel-Hunt: Homophobia, misogyny, racism – they are irrational feelings. And because Alan was a hyper-rational creature, he wouldn’t let that go. I guess the depressing part of rehearsing this play is that, yes, things have changed, but sadly whether it be 1952, 1986 when the play was written, or now, that irrational feeling still exists. I think Alan would be rather surprised by that: that we can make AI, but we still sometimes think that being gay is wrong!

Tickets are on sale at www.newtheatre-peterborough.com