Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt wrote The Physicists. Photo / Getty Images
Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt wrote The Physicists. Photo / Getty Images
It has often been said that the best way to send a serious message is through comedy and so it is especially when we consider the work of Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt.
Last week our play reading group read The Physicists, Dürrenmatt's response to the Second World War and thegrowth of nuclear technology.
The play opens in the drawing room of a sanatorium for the mentally ill where one of the patients has murdered a nurse. The three main patients are Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton and Johann Wilhelm Mobius, who believes he is visited and guided by King Solomon.
It is soon revealed that Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton are in fact spies from opposite sides of the Cold War, faking mental illness in order to steal Mobius' work, while Mobius, aware of the potentially tragic application of his work, is faking mental illness so that he can retreat from the world to ensure its safety.
The three men debate the moral issues around the use of nuclear weaponry and decide that the responsible course of action is to remain secluded from the world, keeping the terrible knowledge to themselves.
Unbeknown to them, however, the director of the clinic, Fräulein Doktor Mathilde von Zander, has copied Mobius' work and plans to use it to further her goal of world domination.
Who's the crazy one?
I felt this play is particularly relevant today, considering the fact that we are watching an immoral grab for land and power by a ruthless Russian president who is threatening to use nuclear weapons to further his aims.
