'No Exit': An Engaging Little Slice of Hell
By Celia Wren
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Long before the coinage of the word "outsourcing," Jean-Paul Sartre figured out how to reduce labor costs in Hell: Instead of suffering on the rack or writhing in flames -- punishments that require diabolic administrators -- the damned would simply torture one another.
The French writer and noted existentialist philosopher outlined the specifics in his seminal 1944 play "No Exit," in which three strangers mercilessly exploit one another's fears and weaknesses in a windowless room, their conflict eventually prompting one of them to utter the famous line: "Hell is other people."
The scenario doesn't sound like a barrel of laughs, but director Robert McNamara and his capable actors weave flashes of comedy into their fluid, persuasive version of Sartre's play, performed in the adaptation by Paul Bowles. (The production, an offering of Scena Theatre, is a reprise of a 2005 staging.)
Although the humor packs less of a dramatic wallop than the more brooding moments, it helps create a sense of movement and variety. The setting might be bleak and unchanging -- designer Michael Stepowany's infernal room is a white-tiled space furnished only with three wooden divans and a bizarre metal sculpture -- but the action is far from static.
The first cursed soul to appear is Cradeau (Regen Wilson), a gutless, womanizing journalist who collaborated with the Germans in World War II France. He meets his match in the sadistic Inez (Elle Wilhite), a onetime postal clerk who arrives in Hades having destroyed her lesbian lover. Inez is eager to spend the afterlife preying upon the frivolous society woman Estelle (Maura Stadem), who has a dark secret lurking in her past.
The interpersonal dynamics shift ceaselessly during the course of the play, so that each individual has moments of power and weakness, exhilaration and despair. McNamara's actors capitalize on those modulations, glowering, bullying, entreating and gloating by turns, in what amounts to a lurid illustration of the existentialist tenet that action is the key human reality.
Wilson ratchets up the sleaze factor in Cradeau, who comes across as a real wheeler-dealer -- self-congratulatory one moment, blustering the next, the expressions fleeting across his often-sweaty face. Wilhite's Inez is hard-eyed and disdainful, a smoldering presence even when she is silent. Her generally flinty manner makes the moment particularly striking when she and Cradeau dance the rumba during a rare shared triumph.
By comparison, Stadem's portrait of the vain, affected Estelle is somewhat flat, but the character serves as an effective foil for the other two.
Anne Paulus's costumes aptly accentuate the social chasms that separate the Hell-mates: In her black velvet evening dress, Estelle clearly has little in common with Inez, who sports a working-class blouse, skirt and beret. A briefly seen figure known as the Boy (Chris Moss), a sort of demonic concierge, represents another ontological realm entirely, given his aging-hipster attire, complete with gold chains and sunglasses.
Vivid as the afterlife is, the damned catch the occasional tantalizing glimpse of their old associates on Earth. During these eavesdropping stints, Marianne Meadows's evocative lighting -- which at other times is as harsh as an interrogation cell's -- grows dim and otherworldly. The effect helps draw attention to the import of these visions: What Cradeau, Inez and Estelle really fear is being forgotten or ignored. As their reputations atrophy in the world of the living, they choose to continue their program of mutual torture in Hell. Cruelty is at least a form of attention.
