The mathematician Alan Turing committed suicide in 1954. Today he is celebrated for his remarkable contributions to computing, artificial intelligence and the wartime code-breaking efforts at Bletchley Park. But in his lifetime he was a haunted prodigy, hounded for being gay.
In this unlikely sounding musical he is played with fidgety precision by Richard Delaney. At first he’s a tweedy youth whose thoughts are bottled away. Later he is a no less awkward adult — naïve, highly strung and always prey to the fussy pride of his mother Sara (Judith Paris, the cast’s most assured singer). Early on he is described as having a “twitch in his voice”, and as he moves from the purgatory of his boarding school into messy adulthood, professional entanglements and postwar disgrace, that jerky impulsiveness gets worse.
The songs aren’t anchored by Turing. Instead they happen around him. This suggests his alienation, but The Universal Machine doesn’t make a strong enough case for its existence as a musical rather than a play. Dominic Brennan of hotly tipped band Night Engine provides the score. A couple of numbers take wing, but there’s not much sense of the music enhancing the drama or being essential to it, and the lyrics aren’t memorable.
The book by David Byrne (not the former Talking Heads frontman) contains touching moments yet its balance feels uncertain. We see a lot, for instance, of Turing’s daunting landlady, who introduces strident notes of comedy. The bumpy chronology also causes some confusion.
That said, Byrne’s direction injects real vigour. The entire cast approaches the show with admirable attack: Cecilia Colby and Michael Faulkner stand out. For all its flaws, The Universal Machine makes an engaging attempt to convey the troubled brilliance of Turing’s mind.
Until May 11 (020 7383 9034, newdiorama.com)
