Sartre’s ‘No Exit’ in Camden

Hothouse, a new theatrical group in South Jersey, has got off to a good start by staging No Exit in a well-directed production at Camden’s Walt Whitman Arts Center. The setup of the play is simple: Joseph (Lane Jackson) is ushered into a room by a valet (Dan Hickey), where there are no windows or mirrors and whose only furniture is a dresser and three French Empire chairs in a tight cloverleaf arrangement. They can’t be moved, nor can anything else in the room, which is hot enough for irritation but not distraction. There is a buzzer that the valet can operate but Joseph cannot.

This is hell, or at least one of the apartments in a house that apparently has many mansions. Oh, yes, sleep is also out of the question. Joseph notices that the valet, who’s apologetic about the accommodations but can offer none other, lacks eyelids. It’s the insomniac’s perfect nightmare— except, of course, that insomniacs don’t have nightmares.

Two women

This scenario might seem hell enough, but then solitary confinement with no possibility of relief—that is, the mind perpetually awake but without object other than itself—is no formula for torment, but only for madness. In addition, a legion of lunatics in complete isolation from one another would seem to defeat the idea that the punishment, particularly in hell, should fit the crime. Besides, what are those three chairs for?

The answer to that question is soon provided as the valet brings a second guest, Inès (Lee Kiszonas), and then a third, younger and prettier, Estelle (McKenzie Jones). Joseph hasn’t been alone long enough to appreciate company, and Inès, mannishly attired and with a butch haircut, isn’t very glad to see him, either.

When Estelle arrives, Inès’s interest perks up immediately. Estelle turns to Joseph as preferable company, but he’s preoccupied with his own sins: He’s a soldier shot for desertion who wants to know whether he’s a coward. This question isn’t easily answered for oneself, since cowardice, like bravery, is a judgment bestowed by others. And what can two women, one hostile and the other vapidly coquettish, tell him about that?

The answer to this question is that, sooner or later, we learn who we are not simply from the judgment of others, but from our interactions with them. Joseph wants to know who he is essentially, but there’s no such thing as essence in Sartre— only a record of what, in the end, we’ve done. Hell is the leisure we have to contemplate it when the record is complete; Joseph can no longer learn who he is, but only who he was.

Cat and mouse

The company he’s been given seems imperfect for this purpose, but then, hell has purposes of its own. Each member of the trio is in some way useless to the others. Joseph wants (or thinks he wants) only to be left alone; Inès wants Estelle but can’t have her; Estelle wants Joseph, but only for the validation (that she is wanted, that she is desirable) that he has no interest in giving her. Each plays and toys in turn with the others, but chiefly to spite or negate the odd one out in the trio. Inès’s interest in Estelle is serious, but only as the cat’s is in the mouse; she’s a natural predator who will soon be bored with her conquest — except that she cannot consummate it.

Inès is the most vicious character of the three, but also the most intelligent and self-aware, and therefore the first to grasp their situation: They are each other’s devils, each selected to provide torment for the other two. Joseph is a little slower on the uptake, but he provides the play with its most celebrated line: “Hell is other people.” It’s a line so famous that it comes wrapped in quotation marks, and therefore poses a problem of delivery. Lane Jackson shouts it at peak volume as the culmination of a tirade, so that it’s almost clipped off— an interesting choice that makes it work again as part of the text instead of something we simply wait to get out of the way.

Fearless refugee

The cast is fine under Connie Norwood’s brisk and highly physical direction; these characters may loathe their companions, but at the same time they crawl over one another like eels. Lee Kiszonas as Inès is particularly striking: From the moment of her entrance, as proud as a refugee determined to show no fear as she crosses a strange border, she is the dominant force onstage. Of course she will suffer, and she does, but she won’t break. Goodness may ultimately be the strongest force in the universe, but evil is what works in hell, and this is one lady whom Beelzebub himself might quail to meet.

No Exit is perhaps a bit talky for modern taste, but after 70 years it stands up not merely as a seminal piece of modern theater but as a vital part of its repertory. Here’s welcome to the Delaware Valley’s newest company, and here’s hoping for more productions as challenging as this one.