Huis Clos review, Trafalgar Studios 2

We're in hell. It is not as you have imagined it, nor indeed as the three characters incarcerated together in a shabby living room with shredded and outdated furniture imagined it. Which of them is the torturer? As the valet who has eased their journeys through the corridors of eternal damnation closes the door on them forever we as well as the dead are literally in the dark.

Huis Clos (Behind Closed Doors) is a play by Jean Paul Sartre. The master of existentialism here turns his hand to karma, the philosophy of 'what goes around comes around'.  Marooned together in hell, the pacifist journalist Garcin, a philanderer and cruel bully, finds himself in immortal combat with socialite Estelle, a nymphette with a hunger for admiration, and Ines, a middle-aged clerk with a sapphic drive so strong she's like a wild beast after a month of starvation. 

Hell hath no fury.

Stuart Gilbert's translation is heavy handed, as is Paul Hart's direction. Ines might be more convincing if under, rather than over, stated; Estelle more intriguing if less Sloane and more distressed aristocrat. The thread drawing them together is tenuous. Garcin and the valet are pitched perfectly however, and as the opening minutes are theirs alone, we are hooked from the off.  

In conclusion: This isn't great drama despite the name on the tin, but it's full of intrigues and there's plenty there to make you think including the immortal line "Hell is other people". Isn't that the truth?

References
Henry Hitchings review in The Evening Standard
Huis Clos, tickets