One room, no windows, and a locked door. There’s no way out for three people left alone to share their memories together. Fear of what lies beyond the door turns talk of their earthly transgressions into a meditation on the afterlife and a realisation that they are torturing each other in a living hell.
Reviews
The Financial Times
Sarah Hemmin
"The audience is confined with the characters in the windowless, carpeted drawing room with its threadbare Second Empire furniture. The claustrophobia is intense, as is the constant sense of watching and being watched."
10/01/2012
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The Guardian
Michael Billington
"What is fascinating today, [however,] is the play's prophetic power: this, you feel, is the crucial signpost to modern drama."
10/01/2012
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The Independent
Paul Taylor
"There are no Dantesque punishments in Sartre's indoor version of inferno. His devil is a savvy, ingenious customer who arranges for the damned to indulge in mutual DIY mental torture. Hart's production ... is exceedingly well-cast. The main trio of performances present with a nightmarish, sometimes balefully, comic vividness what can authentically be described as the menage a trois from hell."
10/01/2012
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The Stage
Ben Dowell
"An oppressive and demanding play, and a bold choice for the Donmar to conclude its season of work by its resident assistant directors. But as a small-scale theatrical experience it is powerful."
10/01/2012
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The Times
Libby Purves
"Do not, incidentally, worry about not understanding existentialism. No one does: it was a dyspeptic, post-Christian, wartime grapple with ideas of free will, individual responsibility and the “motiveless act”, whatever that is. More interesting is the play’s curious closeness to mainstream moral theology. Your actions define you, and if there is damnation it comes not from a vengeful God but from your own fossilised inability to change ... Brrr."
11/01/2012
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The Evening Standard
Henry Hitchings
"Admirers of Beckett's deadpan handling of paradox will savour Sartre's writing - and will appreciate the discipline of Paul Hart's prickly production ... But this is theatre at its most claustrophobic and punishing, and many will find it hard work."
10/01/2012
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The Daily Mail
Quentin Letts
"Sartre enthusiasts will welcome this high-brow, neatly-staged production … Sartre’s hell is not only ‘other people’, as the quotation goes, but it is also a place where one does not blink, where tears do not fall, where one does not even sleep. As if to prove that we in 21st-century London do not inhabit hell, I saw one or two heads in the audience loll in slumber. Those who are less keen on Sartre may find the whole thing insufferably tedious. Tough - the Trafalgar Studio 2 is such a tiny place that legging it for the door is not an option. No exit, indeed!"
12/01/2012
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The Sunday Times
Maxie Szalwinska
"Paul Hart’s production boasts tight performances. Will Keen brings a stifled violence to the role of the cowardly, wife-baiting journalist, Garcin. Fiona Glascott and Michelle Fairley do what they can as, respectively, a heartless, infant-murdering socialite and an incessantly rancorous lesbian. But Sartre nails down the play’s meanings early on, and there’s no escaping the grinding staginess of its setup."
15/01/2012
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The Daily Telegraph
Charles Spencer
"It’s an intriguing idea, but the writing is windy and none of the characters come into sharp focus. A sharper, wittier modern English translation is desperately required."
10/01/2012
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