Alan Turing’s life was without doubt dramatic, from the cracking of the Enigma code and breakthroughs in computing to his prosecution for homosexuality. The 2014 film The Imitation Game is proof that his life makes for thrilling storytelling.
The decision to set it to music in this two-hander is harder to fathom and the raison d’etre for Joel Goodman and Jan Osborne’s musical, as a whole, remains a mystery. The production is an emotionless survey of a life with weak songs, a thin book by Joan Greening and glacial pacing from director Jane Miles. Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that its words were originally extracted from Turing’s letters and academic papers.
