At a private Swiss sanatorium called Les Cerisiers, three deluded physicist-patients share a drawing room—one convinced he's Einstein, one Newton, the third hearing King Solomon's voice. When a nurse is strangled, the third such killing, Dürrenmatt's comedy asks whether these 'madmen' are harmless or playing a far more dangerous game.
People who act by careful plan aim at a specific goal, and that makes them especially exposed to accident. Chance hits them hardest when it delivers the exact opposite of what they wanted: the very thing they feared and worked to avoid. The more deliberate the plan, the crueller the reversal.
The content of a science belongs to its specialists, but its effects belong to everyone. A problem that concerns everyone can only be solved by everyone. Any single person who tries to settle it alone, even a brilliant and well-meaning one, is doomed to fail.
Once something has been thought, it can never be unthought. A scientist who sees that their findings are deadly may try to withdraw or hide them, but the knowledge stays in the world. Taking it back is a desperate gesture, not a real remedy.
A situation has only been thought through to the end once you have followed it to its worst possible turn. That turn cannot be predicted from the plan, because it arrives by chance. Stopping short of it leaves the thinking unfinished.
Reality shows itself most clearly in paradox, so anyone who faces a paradox is facing reality head-on. A play can trick an audience into that exposure. It cannot force them to endure what they see, let alone master it.