Stop me if this one sounds familiar: Albert Einstein, Sir
Isaac Newton and a stutterer who sees visions of King Solomon walk into a
demented hunchback’s sanatorium. A few dead nurses later, they discover that
the lynchpin of a society dominated by an “insane female psychiatrist” is the
very same nuclear physics that threatens to blow the play’s protagonists sky
high.

If this sounds confusing, think how “The Physicists”
playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt must have felt trying to squeeze overt cheap
shots at scientists, psychiatrists, police officers, politicians and
international-relations workers into two acts. The feat requires a certain
physics of its own, and he certainly left director Lori Petermann with a
daunting equation to balance. Thirty-odd years after the end of the Cold War,
it’s at best a crapshoot to determine how much emphasis the play’s dated
cultural references should be given, but Petermann selects an approach that
admirably reflects Dürrenmatt’s own politics: Go big, or duck and cover.

While lesser actors could have easily floundered under the
weight of such a loaded script — which curiously alternates between spot-on
political satire and heavy-handed activist melodrama — Petermann’s cast does a
commendable job avoiding the obvious pitfalls. As the aforementioned trio of
quirky ex-physicists toys with Sam-Spade investigator Richard Voss (an
appropriately cartoonish Johnny Wu), the ballooning power of sanatorium
operator Mathilde von Zahnd — think Cruella DeVil on a diet of bottled sunshine
and unicorn blood — goes curiously unnoticed.

“It is I who decide who my patients think they are,” von
Zahnd says with the subtlety of a playwright drop-kicking Sigmund Freud
squarely in the atoms. “I know them far better than they know themselves.”

At the heart of the parody lies the tormented genius Johann
Wilhelm Möbius (Larry Herron), aptly named for the nonorientable mathematical
surface that serves as a tidy metaphor for his mental ambiguity. Between
twirling his robe’s tassels and blurting out a consistent stream of “Solomon,”
we’re largely kept in the dark as to whether science has finally pushed dear
old Möbius over the edge.

This becomes a point of confusion during his shouting
matches with ill-fated love interest Nurse Monika Stettler (Maritxell Carrero,
who has nowhere to go but further over the top after a forceful entrance), as
both struggle to out-crazy each other in a frenzied crescendo toward a
foreseeable climax. Nonetheless, Herron’s straight-man-caught-in-the-middle act
pairs effectively with delightfully outlandish Herbert Beutler/Newton and Ernst
Ernesti/Einstein (the superb Evan Powell and Walter Belenky), who pirouette and
ponder their sanity with just the right amount of wit and gaiety — pun
intended, as Petermann makes abundantly clear.

However, the standout scenestealer is UCSD-veteran Amalia
Fite, whose eccentric von Zahnd somehow makes even the most tired shtick — such
as a back-and-forth with Voss about labeling the patients as “murderers” or
“assailants” — survive the long refrigeration since Dürrenmatt’s 1961 cheese
buffet.

Accompanying an already complex script, Petermann’s
attention to detail is perhaps the play’s greatest strength and most salient
weakness. No actor ever idles during the performance — the sanatorium’s burly he-men
guards even remain in the light to create ominous shadows over the loony chums
— but it’s occasionally a challenge to focus on both the plot and the number of
quirky goings-on in the background. The first act especially runs the risk of
audience tennis-neck, as the extras’ engaging pantomimes during the opening
scene encourage even more pronounced disorientation. But as the first act
sprints through the jokes in the interest of advancing the story, the second
revels in its surprising genre shift, as Dürrenmatt makes clear his closet
aspiration to write 007 novellas.

Despite the play’s commitment issues, the cast manages to
successfully grab the parallels between the nuclear war-fueled paranoia of then
and now, allowing them to drive the greater message home. The deliberate,
reflective finale — in which many of our questions are finally laid to rest —
gives the audience, much like the scientists, little choice but to “take refuge
in prisons [we] built for [ourselves].”

“The Physicists” is currently playing at the Mandell Weiss
Theater through Feb. 16.