No Way Out (Huis Clos)

Synopsis

This black comedy is set in a vaudevillian underworld. Garcin, Inez and Estelle are trapped together for eternity as penance for their corrupt lives. Through probing investigation of each others' actions, and attacks on each others' characters and continuous treadmill of sexual exploitation, they finally come to realise that the traditional hell they had so feared would have been infinitely preferable to this eternity of each other. As Garcin observes 'no need for the rack... Hell is other people.' Huis Clos was written in 1943 and is one of Sarte's most influential plays.

Our Review:

21 August 2009

Sartre locates his fantasia on the theme that “hell is other people” in a stuffy, mid-19th-century French waiting room. The wily old existentialist sought to create an environment of maximum claustrophobia within which his three ill-assorted characters could drive each other stir crazy.

Cowardly Garcin, predatory lesbian Inez and spoilt brat Estelle are a match made in, well, hell - an irony that dawns quickly on these recently deceased souls. Too quickly, one might think, as the entire premise of the play is established within the first 30 minutes. The remaining hour needs a sure directorial hand to prevent the audience from identifying too closely with the trio’s tiresome eternity.

Director Luke Kernaghan sets himself a hurdle by locating the play in a forbidding world of bare brick walls and flickering angle-poise lamps. No satire here, then: the only things missing from Jess Wiesner’s grim designs are the very instruments...

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