Spring Break
No Exit marks debut of The Studio Players
JHU students capture Sartre's dark existentialism with help from acclaimed actor and professor John Astin.
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No Exit, directed by John Astin, is a lengthy one-act that tells the story of three new inhabitants of Hell, while allegorically defining the philosophy of existentialism. As the play opens, the Boy (Tarik Najeddine), a servant of Hell, introduces the recently departed Vincent Cradeau (Jerry Wu) to his eternal home. Expecting the traditional whips and chains, Vincent is surprised to find that Hell resembles a Second Empire drawing room, complete with a fireplace and upholstered stools. Gradually two more eternal guests enter - first, the sharp-tongued, self-admitted sadist, Inez Serrano (Kelyee Pratt), and then Estelle Delaunay (Megan Weil), a young, superficial, seemingly helpless socialite. Once the three main characters are settled in, they clash almost immediately. As the play builds, the three torment each other in twisted triangles until ultimately arriving at Sartre's famous existential conclusion - that hell is other people.
Because the emotional core of No Exit exists largely between the lines, it was crucial that the small ensemble demonstrate a subtlety that eludes most student actors. Despite a mixed opening and a few rough edges, they unquestionably reach that core by portraying their characters with a shame and self-hatred that are both tactfully restrained and deeply poignant.
Pratt delivers a mature, incisive performance as Inez. Inez, unlike Vincent and Estelle, has an almost immediate familiarity with Hell's design, but feels an unrelenting and eventually imprisoning need to torment her fellow captives. Pratt, as the torturous side of Inez, fills her simple kindnesses (hugs and half-smiles) with devious nuances, hiding Inez's interior behind a superiority complex and spiteful quips. When Inez's soul is finally bared, Pratt quickly conceals it in a way that's neither funny nor overtly cruel, but sad.
While Najeddine, who plays the Boy, has far less stage time than his costars, his presence might be the most memorable. He effectively balances boredom and deadpan humor to portray a servant eternally stuck in a dead-end job. Walking with a lethargic gait and eyes half closed, he unceremoniously introduces the main characters, each expecting horrible torture, to a rather unassuming Hell. The contrast between his languor and his costars' manic confusion pays off wonderfully.
Wu's character, the terminally insecure Vincent Cradeau, is the first to enter Hell but the last to acknowledge his damnation. Estelle and Inez chip away at him, until, in a paroxysmal monologue, he exclaims the play's famous antisocial catchphrase. At the outset, Wu depicts a bewildered and oblivious Vincent, which fits. As the certainty of his situation becomes clearer, Wu's Vincent becomes more aggressive and aware but always retains an innocent quality. Wu forcefully shatters this innocence during his enormously powerful final monologue.
Weil's unsettling portrayal of Estelle enhances the production's nightmarish tone. Estelle's early obsession with her own reflection serves as a theme throughout the play, evoking existential concepts of identity and recognition. As Weil vividly shifts between ingénue, backstabber and temptress, she passionately illustrates Estelle's utter lack of self-knowledge. Estelle's seemingly benign request for a mirror takes on monumental proportions at the conclusion. Weil's delivery of the final ironic line is a microcosm of her performance - sharp, witty and acutely disturbing.
When a production gets so many things right, its failings, however few, become impossible to ignore. For example, the uninspiring first 10 minutes of the play felt more like a staged reading than a full performance. Perhaps first night jitters were to blame for the somewhat lackluster opening because energy skyrocketed once the full ensemble was introduced. Another problem was the occasionally forced delivery of the slightly dated dialogue.
Far behind the scenes, where words like "delivery" and "dialogue" don't matter, producer Mike Pokorny worked with Astin to create a set that is both tasteful and symbolic. Together, they realized Sartre's sardonic vision of Hell with minimalist sensibilities. They wisely chose to use the Swirnow's black velvet curtains as the drawing room walls, since flats wouldn't have conjured the same creeping darkness that surrounds the actors.
Only five or six feet above the audience, they hung an industrial canopy that extends to the rear of the stage, and lighted it with a fiery orange-red hue. The color choice and oppressive sense of confinement are appropriate nods to the play's infernal setting, but most impressive is the canopy's high-angled tilt, which effectively directs the audience's attention to the stage. And by covering the heads of the cast and spectators alike, it subtly suggests the ticket holders are headed to the same place as the doomed trio.
Presumably for similar reasons, the stage itself isn't elevated and Astin's blocking occasionally places his actors an intimate 12 inches from the front row. During these extreme close-ups - and there are many - one of the three characters approaches the stage's border, mesmerized by torturous visions of the living world moving on without them. As the character gives a play-by-play description of his private torment, he is gazing toward the audience but focusing on something unidentifiable, much farther away. The effect is a startling visual metaphor since the closer the character comes to the real world, the more the audience sees how far away he really is.
By the play's conclusion, the cast and crew had evoked an emotion rarely felt in Hopkins student theater. When the lights came up on Friday night, they shined on a new and powerful dramatic presence.