A musical? At North Coast Rep's small, shallow space? Yes. And that's part of the wonder. When was the last time you heard a musical that wasn't miked? When was the last time you sat, at worst, six rows from the performers? And when was the last time you watched a musical, brimming with nuances, that didn't try to paste you to the rear wall? You could call codirectors Sean Murray and Kathy Brombacher's work an "acoustic staging." And in an era of pyrotechnical effects and Madonna-miked performers, this intimate, extremely personal approach feels downright radical.

Dostoevsky said Don Quixote is "the saddest book ever written...for it is the story of disillusionment." Carlos Fuentes said when Quixote sallies forth, he "leaves the ordered world of the Middle Ages, solid as a castle," and enters the "brave new world of the Renaissance, where everything is in doubt." Quixote's crime? He prefers idealized illusions to reality. But is that a crime? The Doobie Brothers, who should always have the last word on such matters, opine that although "the wise man has the power to reason away what a fool believes," nonetheless "what seems to be is always better than nothing."

NCRT's appropriately earthy staging combines reality and illusion. You can choose to see what's there -- raw, roughhoused life -- or what Quixote sees instead: as he tilts against the shadows of windmills or finds a golden helmet in a shaving dish. Marty Burnett's fine set, the dank "common room" of a Spanish prison, drips with realistic detail, as do Shelly D. Williams's costumes. And when lit by Karin Fillijan's masterful illuminations, the stage pictures recall the great Spanish painters -- El Greco, Velázquez, Murillo, and Zurbaran -- of el siglo de oro, "the Age of Gold," which was also the Age of Cervantes, who died the same day as William Shakespeare: April 23, 1616.

One could quibble about the opening-night performance (everyone could pick up their cues, etc.), but talent runs deep through the cast. Special mention must go to Sandy Campbell, as the downtrodden Aldonza (the most objectified woman in musical theater), and to John Guth, NCRT's marketing director whose winning efforts as Sancho prove he's as talented onstage as off.

I saw Richard Kiley, the original Man of La Mancha, back when, and he was terrific. But Sean Murray, NCRT's artistic director who has taken too long a hiatus from the stage, brings more to the role: he combines vigor with infirmity, his ancient eyes are eloquent, and his voice amazes. (Think you're impervious to the schmaltz of "The Impossible Dream"? Hear his version, and weep.) Murray, who was born to play this role, gives one of the most outstanding performances I've seen in San Diego. Kiley was terrific, but Murray is miraculous.

* * *

When Ron Choularton walks onstage as Alan Turing in Diversionary's Breaking the Code, he looks not like our play's protagonist but like an extra for some science movie. He wears a frumpled sport coat and slacks, a striped shirt he slept in, a diagonally striped tie that clashes with the shirt, a sweater-vest -- rows of abacus-like diamonds -- and he hasn't buttoned the penultimate, from the bottom, button.

If you didn't know who Alan Turing was -- and England didn't -- you would stereotype him as an absent-minded professor, head full of cosmic gizmos, an evanescent touch with reality, the kind of person you hope has a life but wouldn't bet on it (especially after you hear him stutter, or watch him gnaw his nails). You'd never guess that Turing (1912­1954) almost single-handedly invented the computer and broke Nazi Germany's Enigma Code. In a pub, Choularton/Turing boasts quietly, "If it hadn't been for me, we'd have lost the war." Yeah, right, you say? No. He's right.

Germany had an unsinkable ship, the Bismarck, and an unbreakable code machine. The Enigma had five rotors, each with an alphabet. Multiply 26 by 26 five times and you have the number of permutations the "polyalphabetical" machine could produce. Working for a team of British code breakers that included Ludwig Wittgenstein, Turing invented an "electronic brain," one of the first computers, able to distinguish among hundreds of millions of gibberish bits. Although the odds were 50,000 to 1 against it, the machine identified a pattern and broke the code, enabling the Allies to know the whereabouts of German U-boats, sink them, and take control of the Atlantic.

Turing was "quite a big fish." In fact, "Winston [Churchill] thought the world of him." Yet, for security reasons, his heroics had to remain anonymous. Not even his mother knew what he did. And, in an irony so big you could sail the Bismarck through it, England's unknown hero's private life forever tarnished his public image.

Turing was gay. No one would have known if he hadn't mentioned it to a policeman during a routine burglary investigation. Turing was charged with "gross indecency" (on opening night, when the cop made the charge, an audience member whispered "Oscar Wilde," who was also jailed for his homosexuality). Thus the title for Hugh Whitemore's drama cuts two ways: Turing broke the Enigma Code and also England's code of "appropriate" sexual behavior.

Breaking the Code (1986) is more important than great. Whitemore has a compulsion to cover everything, briefly, rather than dig in, and some of his static scenes do go on. Turing was an elitist, and Whitemore writes like one, parsing out meanings single-file, so all us dullards will catch his drift.

Whitemore also writes by the numbers -- Turing's mother is the generic Mom; his lady friend, Pat, the generic Girl Next Door. Directed by Rosina Reynolds, the Diversionary production leavens the text by refusing to stereotype Whitemore's stencil-thin characters. One of the play's themes: the British police are just as repressive as the SS troopers across the Channel. Nick Berry doesn't play the cop, Mick Ross, as a fire-puking Nazi. Instead, Berry makes him a mildly insistent bureaucrat who lives in a profoundly inflexible, by-the-book world.

Jonathan Dunn-Rankin and Rick Stevens, in terrific cameos, perform other variations on administrators: Dunn-Rankin (great to see him back onstage!) as an engaging eccentric; Stevens, a blank-eyed vulture intolerant of imprecision. David Frederick Weiner's set, however, includes whitewashed walls that are such an eyesore, Karin Fillijan's subtle, penumbral lighting battles them all night. Turing was obsessed with right and wrong, in particular those instances where the lines blur. If the all-white set and grayish lighting are making a thematic comment, the production's look suffers from the choice.

Ron Choularton played Turing, must be ten years ago, at the North Coast Rep. He gave a riveting, dynamic performance. As Turing warred against the hypocritical establishment, Choularton resembled a caged banshee. One of the thrills of my job is to watch actors grow. Choularton plays a different Turing for Diversionary. A decade ago we watched an actor playing a man. Now we see the man. Choularton eliminated external trappings. In this remarkable performance, he refuses to dazzle us or, one of the craft's bravest moves, even to make Turing sympathetic. This Turing roars inside, conflicted, impatient, almost inept socially: he just wants them -- and us -- to let him be.

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