In a playbill, scant words describe a classic story. “Setting: A room in hell,” it reads. “Time: The present.” When one takes note of the play’s sole three characters, one may assume that what they are about to watch is a revival of Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit. But Crabs In A Barrel, written by Reginald T. Jackson and directed by Kubbi, is such a departure from Sartre’s opus as to rightly deserve a name of its own.

Jackson’s trio consists of Maurice, a wife beater played by Brian Patterson, Mary, a baby killer played by Atiana Skokan, and Lillian, a lesbian played by Asha John. “Shit. They put me in here with a White man,” says Lillian when Maurice barrels into the room in the play’s opening scene. From there, the three actors dance around each other in precision, painting before the audience the archetypal triangle of loneliness. Each wants what each can’t have, as Lillian explains: Mary wants Maurice who wants Lillian who wants Mary. An endless cycle of teasing and torment that has become known to audiences as the quintessential essence of hell.

Where Jackson’s writing acumen shines is in the play’s recharacterization of one character: Lillian, a Black woman and a lesbian, whose sharp wisdom and unforgiving wit create a power imbalance that at first seems off. After all, one may argue that, in Sartre’s original vision, the power was perfectly shared amongst the three characters: one was just as gullible as the other two. Here, however, Lillian is notably more attuned to the unwinnable situation than the other two. She explains constantly to Maurice and Mary that they are stuck together forever, with no way out. She vexes them just for the sake of it, keeps them from finding peace.

At the end of No Exit, the door leading to the trio’s escape swings open, and none of them leave, exposing the existential hell that humans create for themselves. Crabs In A Barrel closes with Maurice and Mary forcing the door open by sheer will. The two, comforted by one another, decide to leave, and Lillian, left alone, begins to cry. Thus, Jackson reveals a more poignant solitude: that of the Black woman, the lesbian, who even in hell is disenfranchised by the prejudices that govern the human world.