In his production of Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit at Under St. Mark’s, director Michael Hagins has undertaken to provide a new translation of the original as well. The end result is a presentation of the classic that is full of desperation and mean-spiritedness, and language that never feels out of step.

Sartre’s play tells of three strangers stuck together in a room in Hell, steadily getting further and further under one anther skin. Matthew Tiemstra as the journalist Garcin is rather frantic and anxious, with a mean streak coming through. Alaina Hammond as Inez is cold and hard, but fearful. Gigi Principe as Estelle presents a young woman used to having control over her image and how people perceive her, and used to getting her way. The three principal players feed off each other brilliantly and viciously. Charlotte Vaughn Raines rounds out the cast as the valet, welcoming Hell’s newest denizens with the most unnerving smile.

Hagins’s adaptation of the script is accessible and the language is fluid and clear and vivid. But smartly, the English of the translation still has a feel of being of the period in an appropriate manner. The play first premiered in 1944 and it’s not wrong and potentially very beneficial to try and make sure a new translation has language that feels authentic and accessible to a modern audience, but certain elements wouldn’t feel like they entirely make sense if taken completely out of time. 

The only real downside in the staging is more an issue of space than direction – being able to see the door to the room makes a difference and this production was obliged to use a door at the back of the house to have one that could actually open. It made one key moment a little awkward to watch. But on the whole the staging is dynamic and clear and well directed.

This production of No Exit puts the nastiness of these three people front and center. It does well exploring the ways we poke and prod and torment one another. And thus it gets at the heart of the matter with relentlessly.