The Physicists
[1] The story is set in the drawing room of Les Cerisiers sanatorium, which is a psychiatric home for the mentally ill, run by a doctor and psychologist, Mathilde von Zahnd.
The motives behind the two murders become clearer as the play advances into the second act, where it is revealed with startling abruptness that not even one of the three patients is actually mad; they are all only faking insanity for various reasons.
"Einstein" and "Newton" are both spies, representatives of two different countries, and they have infiltrated the Les Cerisiers in order to secure Möbius' documents and, if possible, the man himself.
Möbius, however, persuades them that the secrets he has discovered are too terrible for man to know and assures them that their efforts are in vain because he recently burned all the papers that he developed during his time in the sanatorium.
These noble plans are quickly changed by the play's final plot twist; Fräulein Doktor Mathilde von Zahnd enters the room and reveals to the three men that she has eavesdropped on their entire conversation.
[7] At a mental asylum in Europe, police investigate the murder of two nurses who were assigned to three inmates, all physicists: Mobius, Beutler, and Ernesti.
The play had been first produced in London in January 1963 and made its Australian stage premiere in St Martins Theatre Sydney, October 1963.
"[8] The critic for the Sydney Morning Herald wrote that the production: Shifted the convincing effects in the play from the chaff of its thriller-comedy element.
The light relief dialogue is there for the purpose of keeping a puzzled live audience amused, and on television this doubtful sprinkling of humour did not come through; similarly the two murders and police investigations range false in such unrealistic treatment.
Christopher Muir... followed Duerrenmatt's directions closely, imposing on television the geometrical pattern of the asylum common room with its three cell doors and the curiously clockwork behaviour of the characters.
Tension is well supplied to the second half of the play by, the unexpected twists of the plot, and the cold, lucid arguments of the three physicists were excellently focused in this production.
