The physicists

Melodrama / Characters: 16 male, 4 femaleScenic Requirements: InteriorThe scene is a madhouse and the focus is on three inmates who are nuclear physicists. One thinks he is Newton and another, Einstein. The third has visitations from Solomon. They appear to be nice, likeable lunatics, but nothing is as simple as it seems. Are they really mad? Or are they playing some murderous game with the world as the stake? Who is earnest and who is the spy? Gradually we learn that each has been led down the path to moral destruction, past the signposts of truth, the purity of science, and personal responsibility. The asylum to which their paths have led them seems much saner than the mad world they've left behind. "Brooding over all is the head of the sanatorium, a psychiatrist, who has to enact the most frightening scene at the close of the play.... Mixes bizarre comedy and satire, sometimes extremely amusing, with a science fiction approach." Stage, London.