Reading Order
The Physicists Reading Order
The Physicists (1962) by Friedrich Dürrenmatt is his most perfectly made play — a detective story set in a private psychiatric clinic, organized around the discovery that each of the three patients who has been committed as insane is actually a physicist, and that the apparent madness of each conceals a plan. The first murder happens before the play begins; the second murder happens at the end of Act One; the third murder at the end of Act Two. The detective (Inspector Voss) arrives, investigates, and leaves without solving anything. The psychiatrist (Mathilde von Zahnd) reveals in the last scene that she has stolen the physicist Möbius's equations and is already using them to build weapons. The play is organized around one of Dürrenmatt's Twenty-One Points to The Physicists: 'What concerns everyone can only be resolved by everyone. A story is not concluded until it has taken the worst possible turn.' The worst possible turn is always the Dürrenmatt solution.
Where to start
The Physicists (1962) — the complete text. Best Dürrenmatt reading order: The Visit → The Physicists → Play Strindberg → Romulus the Great.
Complete The Physicists Book List
- 1Buy
The Physicists
Friedrich Dürrenmatt·1962·The complete play — Möbius, Newton, Einstein, and Mathilde von Zahnd in the psychiatric clinic. Dürrenmatt's most frequently performed play after The Visit; the first production starred Therese Giehse and was directed by Oskar Wälterlin at the Schauspielhaus Zürich in 1962 - 2Buy
The Visit
Friedrich Dürrenmatt·1956·The companion — Clara Zachanassian and the town of Güllen. The companion investigation of the same dark comic mechanism: a situation that appears to have a moral solution but is organized so that no moral solution is possible. Both plays arrive at Dürrenmatt's 'worst possible turn' - 3Buy
Copenhagen
Michael Frayn·1998·Frayn's companion investigation of the same historical problem — physicists and the ethics of scientific knowledge in wartime. The companion contemporary play organized around the same question: what does a physicist owe to the world when their knowledge could be used to destroy it? - 4Buy
The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Richard Rhodes·1986·Rhodes's companion history of the Manhattan Project. The companion investigation of the same question from the historical record: what did the physicists who built the bomb think they were doing, and what happened when they found out? - 5Buy
Life of Galileo
Bertolt Brecht·1943·Brecht's companion about Galileo's recantation and the scientist's relationship to political power. The companion investigation of the same question that organizes The Physicists: what is the scientist's responsibility when the knowledge they possess could be catastrophically misused? - 6Buy
Dr. Strangelove
Stanley Kubrick·1964·Kubrick's companion dark comedy about nuclear war and the military-industrial complex. The companion film investigation of the same subject: the dark comedy of rational actors producing irrational catastrophe, where everyone follows their own logic perfectly and the result is the end of the world. Dr. Strangelove and The Physicists are companion dark comedies of nuclear anxiety - 7Buy
Oppenheimer
Tom Morton-Smith·2015·Morton-Smith's companion play about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project. The companion contemporary play organized around the same question that Dürrenmatt investigates through a psychiatric clinic: what happens when a physicist understands what they have created? - 8Buy
The Bomb
Various·2008·The companion collection of poems and prose by poets responding to the nuclear age. The companion as a different formal response to the same problem that The Physicists addresses dramatically: how do we think about a world that has learned to destroy itself?
The Physicists — Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Physicists about?
The Physicists is about three patients in a private psychiatric clinic who appear to be mad — one believes he is Isaac Newton, one believes he is Albert Einstein, and one (Möbius) sees visions of King Solomon. But each is actually a physicist, and each is there by design: Newton and Einstein are intelligence agents trying to recruit Möbius (or steal his equations), and Möbius has committed himself voluntarily to keep his equations (which would give whoever possesses them the ability to dominate the world) out of anyone's hands. The play's twist is that Möbius's sacrifice is futile: the clinic's psychiatrist, Mathilde von Zahnd, has already read and copied his equations, and she intends to use them.
What are Dürrenmatt's Twenty-One Points to The Physicists?
Dürrenmatt appended Twenty-One Points to The Physicists at the end of the published text — a set of paradoxes and principles about the nature of comedy and the function of the play. The most important points: 'A story is not concluded until it has taken the worst possible turn'; 'The worst possible turn is not foreseeable. It occurs by accident'; 'Whoever plans the worst possible turn is not its author but its victim'; 'A play is an attempt to give form to the world.' These points describe what Dürrenmatt calls his 'tragic comedy': a dramatic form that uses comic structure (precision, plotting, inevitability) to arrive at tragic conclusions — specifically, the conclusion that reason, when applied to human problems, produces the worst possible outcome.
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