Madmen and Specialists

"Madmen and Specialists" is a play by Wole Soyinka, conceived in 1970 during his imprisonment in the Nigerian Civil War. The play, Soyinka's eighth, has close links to the Theatre of the Absurd. Abiola Irele (in the Lagos Sunday Times) called it "a nightmarish image of our collective life as it appears to a detached and reflective consciousness". "Madmen and Specialists" is considered Soyinka's most pessimistic play, dealing with "man's inhumanity and pervasive corruption in structures of power". The plot concerns Dr. Bero, a corrupt specialist, who imprisons and torments his physician father.