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This past summer's "Breaking The Code" Revival at Barrington Stage

Posted by:	rifletwirlingtenor 09:29 pm EST 01/21/15
In reply to:	Breaking the Code/Imitation Game - bobby2 04:01 pm EST 01/21/15

While I've only seen chunks of the BBC TV version of "Breaking The Code" with Jacobi, I was very fortunate to see the revival of the play at Barrington Stages this past summer in the Berkshires. The truly amazing Mark H. Dold played Turing to great acclaim. I have seen the film "The Imitation Game" twice and I can offer a few comparisons. The play includes characters drawn in a more detailed way than the film (his beloved childhood buddy Christoher, the commanding officer who initially hires Turing) or that don't even appear in the film at all (Turing's mother, a couple of sex partners including the guy that gets Turin in trouble in the first place). Cumberbatch is excellent as Turing in the movie but Dold's take on the role was unforgettable--a nervous, endlessly churning mind inside a body expressing itself with nervous twitches and a personality overwhelmed by social ineptitude. I would say that Joan, named Pat in the play, figures a bit more realistically in the play (and a little less often) but both works contain the scene where she comes to visit Turin during his hormone therapy--just as shocking (if somewhat more subtle and less dramatic in the play--indeed, in the play he makes several comments about his enlarged breasts, something only mentioned in passing in the movie). There are probably more things as well but this is what comes immediately to mind.

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