Jenna Palermo and Giovanni Navarro (Michael Hardy Photography)
Reviewed by Socks Whitmore
Long Beach Playhouse
Through June 25, 2025
Last weekend, the Long Beach Playhouse opened its summer production of Ada and the Engine, a play by Lauren Gunderson about real feminist figure Ada Lovelace. Ada was the only legitimate child of the infamous poet Lord Byron and a brilliant mathematician in her own right — perhaps best known for her impact on the field of computer programming through her work on Charles Babbage’s proposed mechanical computer, the Analytical Engine. In this speculative retelling, audiences follow Ada through the unfolding relationships among her, her husband, her mother, and Charles. Ada and Charles are posited as star-crossed lovers kept apart by their social circumstances, with the Analytical Engine at the heart of their mutual infatuation.
The story unwinds on a simple and relatively unassuming set. Gunderson’s script embraces themes that touch on aristocracy, reputation, status, and social norms, yet the plain white garden arches in the back leave any splendor — as well as the front door — mostly to the imagination. Ada and Charles talk constantly of a marvelous Analytical Engine, but no visuals of their vision ever manifest on stage. While it’s true that the engine’s design was never fully constructed during Babbage’s lifetime, the absence of any physical representation obliges the audience to imagine it.
In a cast of four, Jenna Palermo French stands out as Ada Lovelace, with a charming and expressive quality that makes her character easy to root for. The tension between French’s Ada and Brian Pirnat’s Charles is palpable, which makes a compelling case for their imagined chemistry. But the storytelling is impacted by the small size of the cast, which is evidenced in scenes like the party where Ada and Charles first meet, and in the awkward double casting of Giovanni Navarro as both Ada’s husband Lord Lovelace and her father Lord Byron. Holly Jones also doubles as Lady Anabella Byron and Mary Sommerville; the sameness in the mannerisms of these two characters, save for an accent adjustment, leaves something to be desired.
At times, the script feels emotionally flat, which makes it difficult for the actors to keep things interesting, but the comedy warms up in Act II with a snappy two-hander scene between Ada and Charles inspired by their real-life conflict over a paper on the Engine that they published together. In this scene, Ada accuses Charles of being disliked by most other people, but because the audience only ever sees his relationships with Ada, her mother, and her husband, it’s somewhat difficult to put stock in the claim.
The emotional climax comes with the sharp decline in Ada’s health and mind, culminating in a moving scene between the pair at the end of Ada’s life — a touching, bittersweet moment that could have perfectly ended the play, but instead leads into an inexplicably drawn-out dream sequence that almost feels like another production entirely. (Poor Pirnat as Charles is left trapped downstage between scenes, delivering a remarkable silent performance of frozen grief before finally being set free just minutes before the end of the show.)
The not-entirely-successful musical number shoehorned into the finale makes one wonder if Gunderson secretly hoped to write a musical.
Ada and the Engine is not the only theatrical work to tackle Ada Lovelace’s story; it competes with the play Intelligence by Sarah Grochala, a musical called Ada’s Algorithm, and an opera called The Infinite Energy of Ada Lovelace. Though this particular rendering offers a peppering of poetic one-liners and a love letter to mathematics, without a cohesive ending it’s unclear what the audience is meant to take away from it.
Long Beach Playhouse, Studio Theater, 5021 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 2 pm; thru June 25. www.LBPlayhouse.org Runtime: one hour and 55 minutes with one 15 minute intermission
