Imagine: you discover a formula, not just any formula, but one on which the survival of humanity depends. What would you do? Hide, hoping
that fate would pass you by unnoticed? Share your discovery with the world, regardless of the consequences? Or would you perhaps voluntarily admit yourself to a psychiatric clinic and claim that King Solomon had appeared to you in order to prevent your discovery – the so-called ‘world formula’ – from falling into the wrong hands? Because one thing is certain: in the wrong hands, this formula could mean nothing less than the downfall of humanity.

In The Physicists, Friedrich Dürrenmatt takes this moral dilemma to grotesque extremes. Möbius, who has made a discovery that could change everything, decides to go mad, or at least to stage his madness. Dürrenmatt wrote the play in 1961, in the shadow of the Cold War and the nuclear threat. Yet The Physicists remains frighteningly relevant to this day. The ‘world formula’ remains deliberately vague, a symbol of any scientific discovery whose implications can no longer be controlled.

A question of responsibility

In a present where knowledge means power – and power is rarely moral – the play poses a question that remains open to this day: Who bears responsibility for what is conceivable? Science? Politics? Or have we long been living in a world where technology and artificial intelligence make ethical decisions or take them away from us?

Friedrich Dürrenmatt, born in Switzerland in 1921, rebelled early on against religion, authority and school. Already in childhood, he discovered his passion for astronomy, a theme that runs through his literary work. With plays such as Romulus the Great, The Visit and The Physicists, he became one of the most important playwrights of the 20th century. His works are characterised by dark humour, philosophical depth and an unshakeable distrust of power structures.

Tragicomedy

Bastian Kraft, who has already staged Der Besuch der alten Dame (The Visit), Max Frisch's Biografie: Ein Spiel (Biography: A Play) and George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion at Deutsches Theater, will once again be turning his attention to a Dürrenmatt classic in the 2025/26 season. With a keen sense of the tragicomic and a precise eye for the abysses beneath the surface. The plot of the tragicomedy unfolds with grotesque twists and turns and the pull of a crime drama. In the process, a central question becomes increasingly pressing: can a catastrophe still be averted once it has been raised as a possibility?

A dramatic chain reaction

The dramatic structure follows the principle of a chain reaction; as with dominoes, a single push is enough to trigger an unstoppable movement. Each scene acts as a link in this sequence, a step closer to the inevitable abyss. The recurring reference to the atomic bomb underlines this idea: both technically and morally. And so Dürrenmatt's play itself becomes a dramatic chain reaction in which the inevitable inevitably takes shape.