No Way Out (Huis Clos)

”No Way Out” is a one act play that will be performed at Beaumaris Theatre for two nights only. It is a journey into Jean-Paul Sartre's hell, though it is not the traditional hell with demons and hot pokers. Instead Sartre's hell is a small room with just three people - Garcin, Inez and Estelle - set to spend the rest of eternity together, each being the others’ personal torturer. The play was originally written in just two weeks by Sartre as a short one act play so that the French public could still go out to the theatre during the Nazi occupation. It is full of Sartrean existential themes that are as important today as they were then. Essentially we see the three characters enter into hell, and gradually they begin to slowly extract the others’ reason for being in hell. We see the characters slowly reveal more of their true selves in response to the others’ presence. This play is where the famous Sartre quote "Hell is other people" comes from. We see Sartre explore this statement, leaving at the end a far more chilling idea that we are all stuck in our own hell of other people and that we all truly have "No Way Out".