“Ada and the Engine” fails to capitalize on compelling subject, good casting

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace was a visionary, a maths prodigy to the nth degree who, in the first half of the 19th century, glimpsed the future of computers and coding. She would be an attractive character even if she weren’t the daughter of Lord Byron, the celebrated Romantic poet. It’s no wonder Lauren Gunderson is not the first to write a play about her.

But Ada and the Engine doesn’t do her justice, running out of steam after the first act and making her life less interesting than it really was. Thankfully, good casting in the title role keeps what happens onstage emotionally engaging.

We meet Ada (Jenna Palermo French) on the eve of her formal entry into society. Her mother (Holly Jones) insists she get to work on landing a husband because that’s supposed to be the main occupation of young eligible women in 1830s England. But Ada’s is a life of the mind, so the chief highlight of her debut is meeting Charles Babbage (Brian Pirnat), an inventor/mathematician/theorist hard at work on a calculating machine. Ada is vastly excited by the idea — immediately grokking possibilities that most men with university educations (a path closed to women at the time) couldn’t hope to grasp — and Babbage eagerly accedes to a correspondence, starting a relationship that would be the most important of their lives.

Clunky as it can be, Act I sets all of this in motion satisfactorily enough. French makes for an excellent Ada, effusing the lambent mind and spirit that is evident in real-life Ada’s correspondence (upon which the Gunderson draws heavily and explicitly). And though Gunderson’s characterization of Babbage leaves something to be desired, Pirnat and French create the play’s most poignant moments with simple body language, embodying the connection of true soulmates.

But Act II gets stuck in the mud. Opening with an argument between the two that should seem a bit overwrought even to those who don’t know that it’s Gunderson’s invention (based on a disagreement hinted at in their epistles that lasted fewer than four days), the script never regains traction. Nearly half the act is basically an overlong dénouement followed by an overlong musical number that director Kelsey Weinstein would need to scale up for it to have any chance of working the way Gunderson intends. But with a droll, brief coda Weinstein does enable the audience to leave on a high note.

Although this production partly succeeds on a human level thanks to good acting and rapport, in telling the story of a pair of great minds who together weaved an image of the future, Ada and the Engine best serves as inspiration to delve into the historical facts.

Ada and the Engine at Long Beach Playhouse

Times: Fri–Sat 8:00 p.m., Sun 2:00 p.m.
The show runs through July 5.
Cost: $20 to $30 (plus $4 fee if ordering online)
Details: (562) 494-1014; LBplayhouse.org 
Venue: Long Beach Playhouse, 5021 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach