Hell (and Heaven Too) is Other People

Alice Camarota Delivers a Gripping Modern Take on a Classic Work

Jean-Paul Sartre would be pleased to know his iconic No Exit still resonates—whether he’s looking down upon the earth, or looking up at it as he likely anticipated.

Upon arriving in his room in Hell after a particularly violent death, Joseph Garcin (Connor Wilson) asks the imposing Valet (Thoeger Hanson) where the implements of torture are. “Where are the thumbscrews, the whips, the racks?” The Valet looks at him puzzled. There are none, just three comfy couches that Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition might consider wielding. “It’s hideous,” declares Garcin, who goes on to declare that he is well aware of why he has been condemned to Hell and has nothing to hide. But just when he’s feeling the Hades version of comfortable, Garcin learns that his deluxe afterlife apartment comes with roommates. Inez Serrano (Amie Margoles) arrives to join him, wearing a demon-red dress and ready to rock Garcin’s Netherworld. Inez “mistakes” Garcin for her Torturer, and things go downhill from there (yes, even in Hell that’s possible).

Joining the party next is Estelle Rigault (Mandi Sagez), a person so uptight and above-it-all that the bug residing inside her bum has made the journey to the Abyss completely intact. (She would have made a perfect first-class passenger on the Titanic, and hopefully been late for the lifeboats.) Unlike Garcin, she purports to have no idea why she’s in Hell and dismisses it as a likely mistake (much to the amusement of the snarky realist Inez). Estelle immediately claims one of the couches as her own, making sure it matches with her prim dress. She notes that her funeral on earth isn’t even over yet. “The wind is blowing my sister’s veil around,” she observes. “She’s trying her best to cry.” The willfully blind Estelle decides to refer to their current state as not dead, but “absent”. Inez, by contrast, is fully aware of why she’s where she is; she even relishes in her own cruelty. “I need to see other people suffer to exist at all,” she notes as she regales the others with the horror movie that was her life on earth. Garcin’s story is nearly as disturbing, as is his nonchalance about it all.

The trio swap stories of how they perished, then go on to defend their previous existence and come to terms with their current lack thereof. They wonder why they were put together in this room, having nothing in common but the fact that they barely tolerate each other. The personalities of the stoic, unapologetic Garcin, the stuck-up, selfish Estelle, and the manipulative, fiery Inez create a bubbling cauldron of tension as they come to realize they’re trapped in each other’s company for good, and that Inez was correct all along—they are, in fact, each other’s instruments of torture. Following this revelation, they struggle for a way to make a best of an impossible situation, going from contempt to flirtation to a form of love and respect—even if it’s a forced, pale imitation of the real thing.

The actors made a feast of the delicious material, providing a stark contrast of attitudes and sensibilities. Sagez has a wonderful Kristin Wiig-like energy that serves her character well; Wilson is a commanding presence as his character tries to fulfill the “Only Sane Person in the Room” trope; Hansen is perfectly cast as the polite but uncomforting Valet; and Margoles is delightfully incendiary, the spark that sets many metaphorical fires.

The production is directed pitch-perfectly by Director Alice Camarota and Assistant Director Thoeger Hansen.

No Exit is a production of The NuBox; it is produced by Camarota and Hansen.