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Luke Kernaghan and Company, in association with RunAmok Theatre presents
No Way Out (Huis Clos)
by Jean-Paul Sartre
18 August – 12 Sept 09
A review by Chad Armitstead for EXTRA! EXTRA!
Director Luke Kernaghan’s No Way Out makes Sartre’s hell seem as real as the soot-blackened bricks of the Southwark Playhouse. The show is an oppressive force. Taut performances and powerful vision make for a searing psychological excursion into the inferno. The weather appropriately provided sweltering heat, but I would have happily imagined that bit. The play confines itself to a disused bar-turned-prison cell that hints at being Purgatory, but makes a stronger case for Hell. One by one, a man (Garcin) and two women (Inés and Estelle) arrive, welcomed by a valet (in this production an intercom on the wall). They assume that they will be tortured, but no torturer arrives. With no mirrors present, they turn to the opinions of the others to define and affirm themselves. They begin to try to manipulate opinions. The power starts to shift between them and doesn’t stop. This dynamic makes the trio their own torturers despite their best efforts. Escape becomes more and more appealing. In the cavernous bar of Southwark Playhouse, the actors emerge, mingling with the patrons, heightening the sense when they enter the prison that any one of us could be in their position. The first to be locked in, Miguel Oyarzun (Garcin) imposes a defiant grace as he dances in the face of the unseen but acknowledged cameras, alone. Oyarzun skilfully turns Garcin’s defiance to determination then to desperation in the play’s final moments. Alexis Terry (Estelle) likewise effects a remarkable transformation. Terry conceals Estelle’s cracks and fissures, slowly crumbling until the fastidious socialite façade gives way to Estelle’s more vulnerable core. Elisa De Grey (Inés) plays the lesbian postal worker with foreboding elegance. Part Puck, part vulture, part gargoyle, De Grey all but dances in long strides across the stage, perching on tables and mocking Garcin from the audience. Tapping into the satanic finesse of Inés, De Grey makes it clear that she is the one character who understands the true torturous power of manipulating opinion. Kernaghan sets his production in 1970s Argentina, when political opponents of Jorge Videla’s regime simply ‘disappeared.’ Most were killed or tortured, their cries of pain sometimes disguised by blaring tango music. Accordingly in this production, tango music becomes defiance, power, sex, fear and loneliness—often blurring the lines between them. Though one could possibly poke holes in the analogy the production draws between Sartre’s hell and the fate of Argentina’s desaparecidos, there is a certain resonance between them. Both illustrate the humanity-erasing effect of the lust for power over others—to convince or silence them. This lust tests these characters’ humanity. Relying on the mirror of others’ opinions to define themselves, they must either believe the mirror or bend it to their will. Kernaghan’s production asks us to consider the status of our own humanity in our bedrooms, in our homes and in our torture-sanctioning governments. Eva Auster (Multimedia Design) thankfully avoids focus-stealing reproductions of flashbacks from the characters’ lives during moments of recollection. Instead, media elements emerge unobtrusively, presenting vague, ethereal images that elicit the feelingsof nostalgia and the dread of the future. If pressed to find something the production may have neglected, I might say it could further explore the opposite of torture and the moments of tenderness the text affords. No Way Out is a haunting, socially relevant re-imagination of Sartre’s explosive piece. It’s an evening in Hell that will certainly be well spent.
Southwark Playhouse
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ary Couzens