Professional Existentialism

No Exit

By Jean-Paul Sartre

Directed by Fouad Onbargi and Marci Bobis

At the Aggasiz Theater

Through November 22

Three's Company gives television viewers a chance to see Jack in cohabitation with two sexy women. What fun they have--hanging out at the Regal Beagle and playing tricks on Mr. Furley. Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit also presents us with a man living with two women. But the members of this trio aren't as happy because they're dead and in Hell.

No Exit's characters, however, though damned and deceased, are far more entertaining than even the talented Suzanne Somers wearing shorts.

"Hell is other people," complains Garcin (David Sonnenberg), the male of the group. And he's right, because in the existential subterranean setting of Sartre the characters simply cannot escape the company of one another. There is just no exit to which they can run. Garcin, Inez (Lyra Barrera) and Estelle (Jacqueline Sloan) are imprisoned together, in a small and tastelessly furnished room, for eternity.

You can imagine, therefore, all 180 degrees of love triangles--hate triangles, too--which pierce the already dismal dramatic situation. Garcin, a cowardly journalist who neglected his wife, finds himself attracted to Inez, who was a mail-clerk and a lesbian. Unfortunately for Garcin, the dead Inez has retained her latter tendencies. Misanthrope that she is, Inez, in turn, finds herself attracted to the baby-killer Estelle, a vacuous, fallen debutante who wishes Hell had mirrors. And, completing the triangle, poor little rich Estelle would just love to jump in the sack with Garcin.

But Garcin hates Estelle who hates Inez who hates Garcin. It's quite simple, really.

Director/producers Marci Bobis and Fouad Onbargi deserve the Existentialists Award for Excellence; we must thank them for taking this heavy-handed horror story of Sartre's and making it surprisingly palatable. Embellishing the playwright's original script, Bobis and Onbargi have experimented with a mime troupe of five who periodically act out the memories of the three main characters in stylized slow motion. It's kitschy, but it works. The set, also designed by Onbargi, creates a properly sadistic and spartan backdrop. Hell's flames simply cannot compare to the three tacky couches to which the characters are relegated, and the spikes attached to the wall frames seem appropriately frightening.

The true strength of this particular production of No Exit, however, lies in the raw talent of its actors and the sophisticated directorial influence upon them. These performances smack of professionalism. When Barrera's biting tongue exclaims, "I can't get on without making other people suffer," we believe her. Heck, we cringe at her every caustic outburst.

Near the end of the show, a valet (Luke Fleckenstein) who initially incarcerated the threesome, reappears to set free our unhappy roommates. But the coward, the baby-killer and the lesbian have become inured to one another; they cannot bring themselves to walk out the door.

After all, where could they even go? Chrissy, Janet and Jack have dibs on prime-time. And there are no Regal Beagles in Hell.