Description
"The Turing Tape", a one-act play, is a madcap conspiracy theory about the life and times of Alan Mathison Turing, a brilliant cryptanalyst, computer visionary, and homosexual within the British intelligence community of the 1940s and 50s. The play's chief conceit is that, through a troubled romantic relationship with fellow mathematician Robin Gandy, Turing was drawn into the cloak-and-dagger world of notorious Soviet moles Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, and Anthony Blunt. At its heart, "The Turing Tape" is a love story, tracing Turing's obsession with Gandy from their benign picnics during the London bombings of 1941, through his homosexual trial and state-sponsored oestrogen injections of 1952, to his lonely and tragic death in June of 1954. Interwoven throughout the play is the titular Turing Tape, a secretly encrypted account of events, recorded by Alan in his final days as he awaits assassination at the hands of the KGB.
Preamble
