O.C. STAGE REVIEW : ‘Breaking the Code’ Transmits a Mixed Message

As suits a play about a cryptographer, Hugh Whitemore’s “Breaking the Code” at South Coast Repertory has a double-edged title. It is based on the life of Alan Turing, a brilliant British researcher who succeeded in breaking the Nazi code in World War II, saving thousands of British lives.

On the other hand, Turing was also a breaker of the code against homosexuality. And when he got into trouble with the law after the war, his usefulness to the government ceased. He died at the age of 42, after eating an apple dusted with cyanide.

A strange death. Perhaps it was a symbolic suicide, with ironic references to Snow White’s poisoned apple and the fatal fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. But it also could have been an accident. Turing kept cyanide around the house for experiments and never bothered to wash his hands.

Jonathan McMurtry bites into the apple with relish at SCR, but the actor doesn’t necessarily suggest that Turing means this as a last gesture of defiance to a world that insisted he conform. All we can say is that by this time in his life, Turing has learned to appreciate the moment, rather than theorize about it.

This is a victory, as is the preceding scene where McMurtry fixes a radio for a Greek youth (James Nardini) with whom he has just made love. Finally, our hero’s soul has caught up with his body, after years of haunting it like a ghost in a rusty set of armor.

Interesting--but is this what Whitemore’s play wants to say? Here, just as when Derek Jacobi starred in the play on Broadway (no more convincingly than McMurtry does), the play puts out a decidedly mixed message.

The final scenes seem to chronicle Turing’s disgrace and defeat--his expulsion from the research community after being convicted for having interfered with the morals of a far-from-innocent youth in Manchester (John K. Linton).

We are supposed to see all this as a tragedy. In theory, we do--the sacrifice a valuable mind on the altar of puritanism. But the strongest emotion from the stage is Turing’s relief at being freed from the rigidity of small-thinking people, even such noble ones as his former research chief (Dennis Robertson).

The unexpected lightness of being, when one no longer has to encourage the world in its illusions about one’s identity! Our hero has also finally forged a connection with his mother, a woman who had dedicated her life to not looking the facts in the face (Patricia Fraser, outstanding in a delicately balanced assignment). Though lost to the world, this is a man who has found himself.

Why, then, should he commit suicide? If the viewer could be sure that “Breaking the Code” intends such questions, it would pass for a extremely skillful play. In fact, one isn’t at all sure that Whitemore didn’t intend his script as a straightforward study of sexual persecution--an intention that got blurred as he came to appreciate the complexity of the situation.

Scene by scene, the story plays effectively, but in the end we seem to be trying to have it both ways--Turing as the victim of an unjust social code, and Turing as the victor over the body-soul duality. We end in a slight muddle, knowing only that we’ve seen another well-judged South Coast Repertory production, this one staged by Martin Benson.

SCR has a penchant for the “civilized” English play, the play where all the characters--even the lower-class ones--know how to put a sentence together. Set in a world of schools and research labs, “Breaking the Code” presents a world where ideas matter and where “codes” are to be lived up to--Hal Landon Jr.’s detective is no hire-and-salary cop, but a man who takes his profession seriously.

They all do--including Fraser as Turing’s mother, her profession being that of the eternally wide-eyed hostess. It is hard for American actors to get this milieu right, but Benson’s cast does so, catching both their humanity and the cruelty when someone has declared himself loyal to another code.

McMurtry is the center of the evening, and he doesn’t miss anything in his analysis of Turing, including his emotional level, which is that of an overly bright four year old who will have his way. Can that that mind-set coexist with a brain so keen, so rarefied that it can solve a fiendishly difficult enemy code almost by intuition?

It can, and it often does. This is a definitive portrayal of the academic-as-mutant, and there’s not a moment where McMurtry loses sight of where he wants to go with the role. But Whitemore hasn’t quite provided the information needed to send us home knowing what to think of the strange, sad, victorious life of Alan Turing. His code remains unbroken.

Plays at 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, through Nov. 30. Performances Tuesdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7:30 p.m., with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2:30 p.m. Tickets $21-$28. (714) 957-4033.

‘BREAKING THE CODE’

Hugh Whitemore’s play, based on Andrew Hodges’ book, “Alan Turing: The Enigma.” Director Martin Benson. Scenic design Cliff Faulkner. Costumes Walker Hicklin. Lighting Peter Maradudin. Music and sound Michael Roth. Production manager Ted Carlsson Stage manager Julie Haber. With Jonathan McMurtry, Hal Landon Jr., David Poynter, Patricia Fraser, John K. Linton, John-David Keller, Dennis Robertson, Sybil Lines and James Nardini.