Pink Milk Looks at Alan Turing in Fantasy, Dance

By John Farrell

Alan Turing was, according to Winston Churchill, the man most responsible for the allied victory against the Nazis in World War II.

He was the man who invented the theories that make the computer this is being written on possible. He was a surpassing genius who created the computer almost single-handedly and devised a way to read Nazi signals undetected.

He also was a homosexual and in the 1950s’ Britain that was still a criminal offense. No matter what he had accomplished for the British nation, he was convicted as a homosexual and forced to take injections to be chemically castrated. He died two years later, perhaps as a suicide.

You need to know all that to appreciate Pink Milk, the poetic, even dreamy treatment of Turing’s life, which had its West Coast premier recently at the Garage Theatre in Long Beach.

Under the direction of Ashley Elizabeth Allen, with a stark white gazebo set designed by Yuri Okahana, the work is a loving look at Turing’s inner life and, finally, a searing indictment of the British government that used Turing and then callously caused his suicide. Turing’s intellectual prowess is barely noted in the play. You are presumed to know beforehand about him, enjoy and explore his inner life, non-scientific life.

Nick Rapp is Alan, as boy and man. He is sympathetic and natural, a man born into a world where his parents (Craig Johnson as his father and Blair Allison as his mother,) are caring and sympathetic. They know that Alan is a special boy and a special man. The title of the play, Pink Milk, is a reference to his boyhood friend Christopher (Lysander Xanthus), who died from the effects of drinking some pink milk that was tainted with bovine tuberculosis. The loss of this friend apparently lived with Alan his whole life, at least according to this interpretation.

Alan’s life is filled with experiment and increasingly complex knowledge. This is indicated by Matthew Vincent Julian, who plays the various computer robots that Alan creates. (These were not walking, talking machines but that doesn’t really matter.) Lottie Frick plays various inanimate objects in the play and Maribella Magana is a series of authority figures in Alan’s life.

The costumes, designed by Katie Shanks, all in black and white, are an integral part of the play. Almost the only color in the setting are the apples, which Alan ate every day, and which might have been the manner of his suicide at the end of his life. Her costumes, suspenders with chains, vests of similar material, are a part of Alan’s vivid fantasy world.

Director and choreographer Ashley Elizabeth Allen uses this simple set, with the audience arrayed around all four sides, effectively and with more than a little interest. Alan and the others don’t dance to music as much as they go into positions of great difficulty and expressiveness as the play progresses.

This isn’t a definitive life of Turing. In fact, it is anything but. Instead, it is an interpretation of his emotional life and struggles, from his fascination with Disney’s Snow White to his naïveté in dealing with the police. His story is actually tragic, with a fatal flaw in his character exploited by the out-of-date British law. His brilliant successes will have to be told elsewhere.

Tickets are $18 for general admission and $15 for students, seniors and teachers.

Performances are  Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. through Nov. 1.

Details: (562) 433-8337; www.thegaragetheatre.org

Venue: Garage Theatre

Location: 251 E. 7th St., Long Beach