No Exit

Jean Paul Sartre’s No Exit is the noted existentialist philosopher’s seminal 1944 play, in which three strangers mercilessly exploit one another’s fears and weaknesses in a windowless room, their conflict eventually prompting one of them to utter the famous line: “Hell is other people.” The first cursed soul to appear is Cradeau, a cowardly, womanizing journalist who collaborated with the Germans in World War II France. He meets his match in the sadistic Inez, a onetime postal clerk who arrives in Hades having destroyed her lesbian lover. Inez is eager to spend the afterlife preying upon the frivolous society woman Estelle, who has a dark secret lurking in her past. With surprising flashes of humor and cruelty, the interpersonal dynamics shift ceaselessly during the course of the play, so that each individual has moments of power and weakness, exhilaration and despair.