“Hell is other people,” you’ve heard that one, right? This is its genesis: a play about hell as a fairly featureless place wherein the torture is having company. Three sinners, adulterous Garcin, bitchy Inez, and shallow Estelle are stuck in a room. That’s pretty much it.
Naturally, the powers that be have set them up to be as mutually antagonistic as possible. (Amusingly for a sixty-year-old idea, TV’s Big Brother functions in exactly the same way.) There’s a triangle of sexual tension, obviously, but the action is steered in an underhand fashion by Inez as she pits the other two against each
other, tweaking their insecurities.
Garcin and Estelle fail to gang up on Inez as they’re both deeply needy. Garcin needs understanding and Estelle needs to define herself in terms of him, but neither can satisfy the other. The closest they come to salvation is when Garcin realises Inez can redeem him, but she’s a vicious, man-hater. Sod’s Law, eh?
The script is the time-tested work of Satre, its quality is a given. The weak point is the acting: Garcin is dreadful and the other two make a good effort but are still unconvincing and amateurish. This is still worth seeing if you can’t be bothered to read the script.
3/5 
Bernie Greenwood
