Huis Clos is a legal term meaning in camera (behind closed doors). Jean-Paul Sartre’s psychological thriller premiered in Paris in 1944 when France was still under Nazi occupation. It has been translated under such titles as No Way Out, Dead End, No Exit and Vicious Circle and is famous for its definition of hell. Forget what you have seen in Bosch, Giotto, Limbourg and Blake; forget what you have read in Virgil, Dante and Milton. There is no torture chamber, no fire, no brimstone and no red hot pokers. L’enfer, c’est les autres or, as they say in English, Hell is other people.
Sartre (1905-1980), synonymous with existentialism, thought plays should be short, centre on a single event, and that they should have as few characters as possible. There are just three damned souls: a pacifist (Will Keen, particularly impressive) who died a coward, a lesbian (Michelle Fairley) who drove her lover to suicide and a nymphomaniac (Fiona Glascott) who killed her child. They are condemned to spend eternity together in a claustrophobic room without a window and where the light is never turned off. The furniture is Second Empire and in need of upholstery. The walls and ceiling are crumbling. Doomed to torment each other, there is no escape. The script’s weakness is that what they did on earth is too explicit and not interesting enough. The strength of Paul Hart’s production is the actual situation and the acting by the three actors and by Thomas Padden as the valet.