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Box Office: 708.941.8294 |
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"Hell is other people..."
playbill from the 1946 Broadway debut of No Exit directed by film legend John Huston (director of The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen, Key Largo, and as mentioned in his bio in the playbill, his (at the time) upcoming project, Treasure of the Sierra Madre among many others)! The playbill features ads for other shows starring various legends of the stage and screen (including Ingrid Bergman, Ralph Bellamy, Shirley Booth, and Lunt & Fontanne) as well as one for the original production of Garson Kanin's Born Yesterday, staged by the author himself; and the celebrity/society column features a hilarious story about Tallulah Bankhead! Don’t let this rare piece of theatrical history slip thru your fingers! Also up for raffle is a set of four collectible buttons featuring the author of No Exit, Jean-Paul Sartre!
Written during the German occupation of Paris during World War II, Sartre’s story of people confined together against their will struck a chord with French audiences living with the unwanted, menacing presence of Nazi soldiers in their streets and homes. With this comparison in mind, Sartre’s examination of the issues of freedom, self-deception and the nature of time in the play helped Frenc In Sartre’s concept of it, Hell is a state of mind, more than anything else, and exists on earth, whether we are thrust into it by circumstances beyond our control, or we create it ourselves. In Sartre’s Hell, in true existentialist fashion, people must define themselves independently of society’s cultural attributes, traditions and laws, and have only their own thoughts and feelings and the opinions of the others confined with them to determine who they are as people, resulting in a conflict we all deal with everyday: are we who we think or feel we are as people, or are we who others say we are, or neither...for better or worse, who are we? No Exit is an entertaining, and immensely thought-provoking drama from one of the finest philosophical and literary minds of the last century, and in our modern adaptation of it, more accessible and relatable to today’s audiences than ever.
Cast and Crew: Joseph Gardner - Michael Fisher Director - Jeff Gamlin |
The story of No Exit begins when a valet shows former newspaper man, Joseph Gardner to his room…a comfortable, handsome, if sparsely-decorated room with, oddly, no windows, no mirrors, and only one door. Left alone for a time, Gardner examines his surroundings and just as he begins to relax, he is startled by the opening of the door and the arrival of another guest, ex-postal clerk, Ivy Skinner, a woman unknown to him. A short time after the valet has left them to get acquainted, they are joined by another woman, Eve Rogers, a member of that elite group, the idle rich and…another stranger. After the women’s arrival, the valet leaves and the door to the room is closed…and locked. But what would appear to be merely an awkward, if admittedly mysterious, predicament, is much more than that, as this innocuous room is anything but innocuous…it is something far more sinister…it is a room in Hell…and its occupants are no longer among the living… As each of the newly damned wait for the flames to appear and begin to sear their souls, and some sort of torturer to arrive and commence with their eternal torment, they pass the time
with idle conversation…conversation that in time grows more and more personal as they probe each other's unpleasant memories…sins…and desires…and finally come to the horrifying and inescapable conclusion that the identity of their torturer is one they never could have guessed…
h citizens cope with the pain of defeat during the war and after.