Huis Clos/No Way Out

Huis Clos/No Way Out

24 August, 2009
by: Sandraleong

The Southwark Playhouse certainly has a bit of a mysterious vibe to it.  For starters, it's not the easiest and most pleasant place to find on a hot August day - concealed behind a crowded boozer and a small maze of engineering works off Tooley Street. Past its swinging doors, you enter what appears to be a dimly-lit, brick-clad underground vault. While nursing a cool pint at the bar, you hear the rather ominous rumble of trains passing overhead, punctuating the low murmur of conversation from the theatre-going crowd.

It's a perfect setting then, for the staging of Jean-Paul Sartre's Huis Clos, an existentialist play written by the great French philosopher in 1944 that is a sinister examination of humanity - or the lack of it. Three characters – all strangers with sins to pay – meet in Hell, a sparsely-furnished room with three tables, three chairs and not much else. Here, the sweltering day never turns to night, sleep is a luxury left behind in the mortal realm and all its denizens have to pass every second of eternity is each other's torturous company. Heck, they don't even have a toothbrush. Why and how did they get there? The voice that comes over a crackling intercom offers few answers. Think Big Brother-meets-Saw-meets-Lord Of The Flies.

It's not easy material to work with. Sartre's seminal piece has been adapted many times before into movie, operatic and even Vaudevillian versions, so finding new perspectives on it is indubitably a challenge. Also, its existentialist undertones, where the human subject is used as a point of entry into philosophical thought, hardly make for palatable fodder for a South London crowd coming after a long day's work.

But director Luke Kernaghan makes this adaptation look promising from the get-go. He borrows the backdrop of Argentina's Dirty War in the 1950s to infuse the visual beauty of Tango movements into what is essentially a dialogue-heavy, one-act play. The three characters are thus involved in a dance of mutual torment. Without giving too much away, Garcin (Miguel Oyarzun), the Argentinian newsman who fled his country's civil war, seeks redemption from cowardice; manipulative lesbian postal worker Ines (Elisa De Grey) lusts for Estelle (Alexis Terry); vain high-society woman Estelle, in turn, throws herself at Garcin in hope of validating her existence as a woman. But remember, this is Hell – no one gets what they want. The pounding rhythms of Tango music suitably invoke thoughts of passion and power as the damned trio turn out to be each other's arch-antagonists, using their sexualities as weapons to unravel sins, desires and insecurities.

The intimate venue makes this production a wholly immersive experience. Audience members sit an arm's length away from the cast on part of the stage floor. Filing into the studio theatre, you bump into Garcin and Estelle pacing nervously outside. Later, they enter the room via the same door you did. The effect is eerie – you wonder if you're a witness to torture, or bearing the whip yourself.

The actors hold up the weighty material well, riffing off their companions' pain and pleasure (mostly the former). But the middle section of the play does sag a little, with Ines's character becoming increasingly grating with her over-acted feline-like prowl and vile posturing. Some points also seem belaboured, but perhaps one has to remember that Sartre wrote this in 1944 when WWII made the themes of torture and consequence resonate strongly with the intelligentsia, far more than they do now.

But the powerful, disturbing finale is sufficient compensation, and attacks the grim core of these ideas. The door to the room, previously bolted shut, swings open but no one leaves. A dejected Garcin delivers the final, damning verdict on their existence, and perhaps the most famous line from this play: ‘Hell is other people'. The characters watch as a fuzzy black-and-white video of them plays on a TV screen overhead, looping to no end.

Then we know. Hell is, to borrow a line from a song everyone knows, a place where you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.


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Sandraleong