Cleveland Plain Dealer

Sartre’s Vision of Hell is Powerfully Rendered

Wednesday, October 27, 1999
By Marianne Evett
Plain Dealer Theater Critic
 

A Bellboy with an insolent slouch and eyes staring out of soot-black rings shows a man into a room with three chairs and no outside view.

"Where are the torturers?" the man asks.

The bellboy laughs maniacally and leaves, locking the door.

This is hell as imagined by Jean-Paul Sartre in "No Exit" - a hell where human beings efficiently torture one another just by being penned up together. The man, a self-important journalist named Cradeau, is soon joined by two women: first Inez, a tall lesbian with a talent for mockery; then Estelle, a wispy blonde socialite, seductive and selfish. Together, they peel away the self-protective layers each has grown and probe the raw pain beneath.

The Bodwin Portable Theatre Company is presenting a professional production of "No Exit" through Sunday at Notre Dame College. The production is authorized under the Actors Equity Members' Project Code, meaning that the it is a showcase for the actors (who don't get paid); it must have a limited run and free admission, although donations to defray expenses are welcome.

 And showcase it is, of some fine local actors, all of them capable of the kind of bravura theatrics the play demands.

 The trick with "No Exit" is to make you care about these three people, even though each has a repellant side. This production, directed by Peter Manos, pulls it off. Manos also plays Cradeau, editor of a journal called Truth, who was shot as a traitor for trying to escape to Switzerland (the play dates from 1944, when Paris was liberated from the Nazis).

 With his paunchy figure and balding forehead, shining with sweat, Manos gives Cradeau a sleazy quality that automatically undermines the heroic posture he is trying to sustain. It lets you see him as human, frightened, understandable.

Sandra Manos gives Estelle a butterfly charm, tossing her blonde hair, flaunting her decolletage. Estelle is used to manipulating men and, we discover, capable of committing a heartless crime, but she has her pathetic side, too.

As Inez, Alison Hernan has the most difficult role, since Sartre gives her little to work with except an extreme distaste for heterosexual sex and a streak of vengeful malice. Hernan is up to the challenge, however, commanding in her tailored suit, her mobile face mirroring everything from despair to rage to nasty triumph (she has a terrific curl of the lip). Inez is relentless in probing the other two until she drives them together - the result most painful to herself.

Adam Hoffman makes a brief but telling appearance as the bellboy.

"Hell is other people," Cradeau says. But hell is ultimately yourself, stripped bare of the illusions that sustain you. Sartre's play has its predictable twists and turns and sometimes feels repetitive, but it explores this existential idea with great theatricality.

The staging is minimal in this production, since the playing space is at one end of the Great Hall on the third floor of the Administration Building at Notre Dame, where the lamps and end tables are presumably part of the furnishings. For the production, three stools with low backs have been added, each completely draped with a cloth that tends slide off and looks uncomfortable. The space is not easy to find (take the elevator at either end of the building to the third floor; the hall is on the southeast corner), but getting to it is worth the effort to see the debut of this fledgling professional company.

E-Mail: mevett@plaind.com
Phone: (216) 999-4545