Going Long

No Exit

Running Time: 1 hr, 30 min

In Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit, three strangers, recently dead, are faced with spending eternity together in one sparsely appointed room in a sort of Afterlife Hilton; each of these characters is guilty of one sin or another, and all of them are riddled with self-doubt and validation needs, so they all engage in pretty relentless pyscho-emotional warfare against each other and themselves. Or, for shorthand, using the cultural comparatives close to mind, you might consider this The Breakfast Club of the Damned.

Two women, one man. And one of the women prefers women. So already you can sense the potential for negative triangulation here, right? Several overlapping instances, even? Well, this is Sartre, yes, so you know that a tense, frustrating, and ultimately hopeless time will be had by all. The characters -- Garcin, a newsman who editorialized pacifism while playing fascist to his adoring wife; Inez, a postal clerk whose personality fits in well with the modern image of postal workers; and Estelle, a promiscuous trophy wife who married big money and is used to getting by on her looks -- do a wonderful job of providing that tension and frustration and utter lack of hope.

And the actors playing those characters in this Piece of the Pie Productions revival are pretty wonderful, too. Corey Gagne as Garcin anchors the show with yet another solid performance; this is the third time I've seen him onstage, and while he has a certain faint style of movement that carries over from show to show, he's always inhabited roles from the brain and heart outward, bringing characters convincingly to life. Brenda Johnson is such a strikingly showgirl-looking human that a snarky critic might yearn for her to perform less well, so he could say something about how her talent is almost as deep as the cleft in her chin (which is deep as chin-clefts, but not as talents, go, is the joke); but, well, she's terrific as Estelle. And as Inez, Mary Underwood does a decent job, too, save for a tendency to abruptly change eyebrow patterns to underscore Every Shifting Nuance of Emotion in any given line.

David Bellamy's direction has the whole thing running smoothly and making full use of the small single room: a bit of angst near the sofa on the left, a bit of angst near the sofa on the right, a bit of browbeating equidistant from the floor lamp and the sofa in the middle. The couches are beautiful, too -- and color-coded for your convenience.

If post-mortem tension and niggling self-reproof are your particular cup of tea, then this elegantly staged No Exit may be just the half-empty Wedgwood of absinthe you've been looking for. (Feb 3, Thu, 7:45pm; Feb 4, Fri, 4:30pm; Feb 6, Sun, 3:45pm. $10.)