Crypted

Already an award-winning playwright and with a BBC3 sitcom in the pipeline, at 24 years-old Freddie Sybourn displays Tom Stoppard-like skill in taking an academic question (in this case the humanity of numbers)  and using it as a structural and thematic device in his playwriting. Sybourn’s writing, however, is less cynical than Stoppard’s and his new play about the enigmatic code-breaker Alan Turing is one of some emotional power.

The cast is uniformly strong although special mentions should go to Harriet Green, who gives to the part of Turing all the tragic innocence of a holy fool, and Amani  Zardoe, who is as captivating as she is convincing in the role of Turing’s wife, Joan. Sybourn proves himself master of more than just the pen when he performs a couple of pitch-perfect cameos as a detective and a schoolmaster.

Inevitably the decision to cast a woman as Turing raises questions. Is it meant to emphasise Turing’s failure to fit in, his belief that something can be both one thing and another? Or is it simply a result of company constraints? No matter how good Green’s portrayal, or how rigorous the thinking behind her casting – ultimately it serves as an unnecessary distraction, which is a shame in a piece otherwise so well-judged.

“Music,” writes Sybourn’s Turing after the death of his schoolboy lover, “survives the individual instruments which play it.” Likewise this is a play which will continue to resonate with audiences long after the last curtain call.