'No Exit' doesn't make you want to leave

If Halloween didn't frighten you sufficiently, then creep downstairs into the basement of Calhoun College and encounter existentialism at its most menacing. Director André-Phillipe Mistier, MC '00, and his actors spook your cerebral and spiritual certainties in their production of No Exit, by Jean-Paul Sartre. Mistier and cast stage a wonderfully solid if conservative retelling of the play, achieving their strength in the tautness of Sartre's triangular dynamic.

With skin the color of cloud cover, a gaunt valet (Sinton Vignos, SM '01) ushers Garcin (Sean Marlaire, CC '00) into a drawing room as the play opens. With robotic quiver, the valet adjusts the furniture in the room, the hellishly overpatterned wallpaper, and even the shadows of the furniture on the walls. Mistier stages this scene expertly, using the flutter of the valet to distract the viewers from requiring immediate comprehension.

As Garcin soon intimates, this is hell--the genuine article. Disoriented by the unfamiliarity of this hell, and its lack of fire and brimstone, Garcin demands to know where the torturer hides. He waivers between ferocity and a more contemplative incredulity as he comprehends that the valet has no eyelids, that the electricity never turns off here, and that the bell for summoning help may not always work.

When the valet next enters, he escorts the sullen Inez (Annabelle Steinhacker, ES '00) into the room. She too exhibits symptoms of the classic paranoia fashioned by mortality. She "doesn't care much for men, anyway." Such statements, taken with her masculine dress, foretell her later admission of homosexuality. Lastly, Estelle (Amber Gross, BK '00) enters dressed to the nines in perpetual motion as a spinning ballerina in a music box.

These three "absentees" compare their reasons for damnation, and soon become caught in a structure of fickle alliances as they watch time pass on Earth. Their agency hollows as they act only to spite each other. As Inez prophesies and then fulfills, "Each of us will act as torturer to the others." And so questions of self-determinism fly as we see that these three shall never comprehend the enormity of their eternity.

Sartre grids his play as a network of human relationships. The characters define themselves through their degrees of dependence on each other. Mistier infuses much of his direction with this sense of individual anonymity. At crucial moments he uses sillhouettes instead of actor's faces, or boldly turns characters away from the audience.

As he creates this vacuum of personalities, Mistier also tags the three prisoners with some recurring gestural tropes. Gross moves with tremendous energy and presence. The tectonic shifts of her facial expressions counterbalance the other actors' intended stoicism. She mingles childishness with sexuality superbly, without ever sacrificing one for the other.

Marlaire cultivates an English Patient-like wardrobe and civility, conveying the sexual detatchment that comes from cruelty to women. He moves distractedly, just as a man who will spend eternity convincing himself he is not a coward or a cad must do. Marlaire is in finest form when he looks below to earth with a forceful and pitiable gaze and when, finally convinced of his hell, he throws himself, screaming, against the closed door.

Steinhacker saturates every line with the bitterness and frustration expected of her character, a woman who committed suicide. She dazzles when fighting with Marlaire, establishing the requisite chemistry of a passionate enmity, and when silently undressing Gross. On occasion, though, she seems uncomfortable with the mannerisms meant to make her appear unfeminine. She often sits mechanically, with her legs open and her head dangling between them. This movement proves too distracting, and therefore too significant, in its unnatural execution.

Lighting Designer Julian Hardman, BR '98, lights the set from the front and at close enough range that the three sofas cast dark bulging shadows throughout the performance. Makeup Designer Monique Vulin, SY '99, plays with the same idea of shadow and paleness in her treatment of Marlaire and Vignos.

The sparcely furnished set, designed by Terah Maher, DC '99, collapses the already small space into pure claustrophobia with its wallpaper and garish upholstery. Similarly, the lack of any extra sound or music compresses the space into a silence heated to high pressure. Mistier maximizes pauses and silence so that words echo as the only sounds these three can hear.

While the production generally suffers from a slightly ambiguous directorial intent, the cast delivers Sartre with great sensitivity. Although the production is over two hours long and has no intermission, it does not ever feel close to the eternity which Garcin, Inez and Estelle share. See it for the Sartre, but also see it for the actors.

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