Another nurse murdered in the world’s most illustrious sanatorium. And who’s to blame this time: Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein or the brilliant Johann Wilhelm Möbius? But what are these great minds doing here, together at the same time? Who are these men? And what have they got to hide? Written in the shadow of the atom bomb and at a time of unprecedented scientific advance, Dürrenmatt’s hilariously satirical masterpiece, in this exhilarating new version by Jack Thorne, considers if insanity is the only refuge for the dangerously intelligent.
Reviews
The Guardian
Michael Billington
“Dürrenmatt [also] freely admitted that his play owed a lot to Sophocles's Oedipus Rex, in that it shows a hero going to great lengths to avoid the disaster he feared, only to make it more inevitable. But, while it keeps you on enjoyable tenterhooks, the moral debate between the three scientists is both long-delayed and, when it finally comes, conducted in generalities. "Physics has run ahead of humanity," declares Möbius, "and humanity needs the chance to catch up." That may well be true, but I longed for more about the specifics of nuclear physics, which Michael Frayn gave us in Copenhagen.”
08/06/2012
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The Independent
Paul Taylor
“A production that brings home how the piece, a quintessential product of the Cold War, is like what you might get if you were to hand over the concerns of Dr Strangelove to a team comprised of Pirandello and Stoppard.”
08/06/2012
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The Independent on Sunday
Kate Bassett
“The play would surely have felt more urgent in 1961, when nuclear arms were proliferating. But now Dürrenmatt's scenario seems a puzzling allegory, like a theorem in cryptic algebra. The central performances go some way to make up for this, Justin Salinger's Newton sneaking around in a camp periwig, and John Heffernan making the conscience-racked Möbius – slipping between madness and clear-eyed despair – nearly as fascinating as Hamlet. Roll on his Prince of Denmark.”
10/06/2012
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The Daily Mail
Patrick Marmion
“If there’s one outstanding performance, it’s from Thompson as the hunchbacked chief shrink. She looks like the love child of Shakespeare’s Richard III and Roald Dahl’s Miss Trunchbull in Matilda. It’s a terrific showing in a play that otherwise feels too much like hard work.”
08/06/2012
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The Observer
Susannah Clapp
“Rourke ... speeds the action along as much as she can but she can't disguise the fact that though this play has a good heart and mind it moves on leaden feet: the absurd humour is not so much a further layer of physical uncertainty as an attempt to distract from thesis-waving.”
10/06/2012
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The Stage
Natasha Tripney
“Jack Thorne’s version of the text is playful and contains some striking passages, but the faintly absurdist humour hasn’t dated well and though the play’s themes are in many ways still relevant - abuse of power by the state, genius as both curse and blessing - it remains a remote, chilly experience.”
08/06/2012
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The Evening Standard
Henry Hitchings
“Dürrenmatt takes on scientific integrity, notions of duty, nihilism, the question of what people should do with their genius. The results are complex yet not consistently absorbing. Jack Thorne’s efficient new version of the text could be funnier and more felicitous, and the tragicomic power of Dürrenmatt doesn’t fully come across. The strength is Heffernan, a rising star.”
08/06/2012
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The Times
Libby Purves
“Dürrenmatt’s fantasy, [however,] is 50 years old, its earnest purpose overladen with then-modish absurdism and a frankly heavy-handed Teutonic humour. Jack Thorne’s English script is nimble, occasionally eloquent, and sometimes startlingly funny; the cast, especially Justin Salinger’s rather camp “Newton”, time jokes nicely. Yet there are moments in the second half involving retired boxers, dinner silverware, revolvers and wigs when it feels so Monty Python that all it needs is a cry of “nobodee expects the Spanish Inquisition!”.”
09/06/2012
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The Daily Telegraph
Charles Spencer
“The jokes and crude, cartoon-like performances often fall flat. The play I suspect may have influenced the young Tom Stoppard and Joe Orton, but signally lacks the effervescent wit of the former and the comic outrage of the latter. And by the end it has become little more than a lecture.”
08/06/2012
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