No Exit
Jean-Paul Sartre envisioned a hell without God. His characters sin and are punished, but the torments aren't medieval horrors. In fact, compared to Dante's Inferno, Sartre's hell looks downright doable, at first. It's a drawing room, furnished in the Second French Empire style, where three damned people will spend eternity, eyes always open, with each other. Diversionary Theatre and director Esther Emery make a game go with difficult material. Jennifer Brawn Gittings's telling costumes evoke spring 1944, and the acting style's mid-'40s as well. Steven Lone's Cradeau displays a slick leading-man appeal, Rhianna Bashore's Estelle ingenue nativete, and Monique Gaffney's Inez an arch toughness (and Bette Davis eyes). They begin as if in a movie from the period, playing prescribed roles and denying culpability. Then, like wax melting in extreme heat, hell slowly peels away veneers. Each is damned for good reason. Cradeau's a coward, Estelle's a murderer, and Inez admits she needs to "see people suffer to exist at all." They become what Sartre called the "Other," which is everyone outside an authentic self. Cradeau utters the famous line "Hell is other people." But it doesn't mean it's you against everyone else. One goes to Sartre's hell because one has been false to oneself. You become merely an Other for other people.
Worth a try.
When
Ongoing until Sunday, October 5, 2008
Hours
| Sundays, 2pm & 7pm |
| Thursdays, 7:30pm |
| Fridays, 8pm |
| Saturdays, 8pm |