HUIS CLOS. To 1 October.

London

HUIS CLOS
by Jean-Paul Sartre translated by Frank Hauser

King's Head Theatre 115 Upper Street N1 To 1 October 2005
Tue-Sat 8pm Mat Sat & Sun 3.30pm
Runs 1hr 25min No interval

TICKETS: 020 7226 1916
www.kingsheadtheatre.org
Review: Timothy Ramsden 5 September

After-dinner Hell in an Islington pub-theatre has some measure of the situation.Sartre's 1944 play famously gave us the statement Hell is other people but it's an arguable proposition. If true, why all those dating agencies, singles nights and second marriages? There's a presumption too in the play that the infernal authorities have deliberately chosen this trio of people to spend eternity together as ones who'll rub each other the wrong way. It's Hell as a dating agency gone perverse. Or proof that 3's always a crowd.

Sartre's Existentialist anti-Paradise isn't too far from the Christian C S Lewis's idea of Hell as the eternal extension of negative aspects of human personality. What these characters a pacifist editor, a lesbian postal-worker and a social butterfly - have in common is self-obsession. Each of the recently dead can still glimpse their worldly associates and are tormented by being ignored and unable to influence them.

Then there's sexual obsession. Inez looms and leers over young blonde Estelle, who wants a man. She rejects Garcin after kisses and cuddles because he's not enough of a man for her. But if either of the others see anything ideal in the beautiful, well-groomed Estelle, they'd be disillusioned as her own demand for self-satisfaction becomes clearer.

Not that it's easy to work out much of what Emile Faurie's Garcin is after. This refined figure with elegant lapels hardly seems the stuff of forties pacifism, let alone political editorship, never engaging with either of the women or, very much, the situation. He behaves less as if facing a perpetual season in Hell than a fortnight in a rather inferior boarding-house in Bognor Regis.

The women give a much stronger sense of what one translation titles Sartre's Vicious Circle. Suzy Cooper's Estelle gradual realises her situation as she idly seeks satisfaction with Garcin, while Kristen Milward's older Inez is not only a sexual outsider, but someone who's worked for a living. Shrewd, determined and predatory, this Inez knows what it is to have to make your own opportunities, waiting for any chance to assert herself. The fine contrast between these women is this production's main achievement.

Estelle: Suzy Cooper
Inez: Kristen Milward
Garcin: Emile Faurie
Waiter: Reuben Henry-Biggs

Director: Drew Ackroyd
Designer: Atlanta Duffy
Lighting: Catriona Silver
Sound: Jane Atkins
Costume: Francesco Santoro

2005-09-12 12:33:31