The Observer, February 22, 2008
Volume XL, Issue 18
PTG succeeds with juxtaposition of one-act plays
Last weekend, Players' Theatre Group presented two drastically different one-act plays: A Betrothal, by Lanford Wilson, and No Exit, by Jean-Paul Sartre. The clever juxtaposition of these two plays strengthened the contrasting themes and messages of both of them.
A Betrothal's actors, freshman Bronwen Pitchford and junior Clint Gibler, filled the short play with distinction and humor through their strong character development. Gibler's character, Kermit Wasserman, is meek and humorous, constantly stumbling over his words and attempting to converse without insulting his counterpart. Pitchford's character, J. H. Joslyn, is completely the opposite: strong, defensive, and abrasive.
The humor of this play lies in the fact that the audience has no idea what the characters are talking about at the beginning. In an attempt to catch on, I first thought they were discussing a dog show, then a horse show, and finally I, and hopefully the audience, came to realize that Wasserman and Joslyn were hotly debating the issue of a flower show. Wilson's personalization of the flowers and the characters' clear obsession with the color, texture, style, strength, and longevity of the flowers brought the play to a unique level of humor. The audience was left on a light and happy note, contemplating the culmination of this short show: the "betrothal" of Wasserman's and Joslyn's most prized flowers to create a first-prize flower.
No Exit, a play about the tortures of hell, could not have been more different. Performed by freshmen Stasia Lizanich and Stephen Berg, sophomore Kate Duval, and junior John Horton, this play transitioned from dark to darker. Each actor succinctly captured their character's style and emotion, and the interactions between them created intense moments.
Berg's character, Joseph Garcin, enters the set, escorted by the sarcastic and smirking Valet, played by Horton, and immediately asks where instruments of torture are. Duval and Lizinich's characters each enter with the same expectations. Slowly the characters realize that the means of torture is simply an unending, painfully slow existence, with no sleep or rest allowed, in the company of the other characters. The characters do not accept their fate at first, referring to themselves as "absentees" rather than as dead. Sartre brilliantly filled the play with the constant repetition of the live terms, such as living, change, and fate; as though the characters still believe that their existence has any part in those words.
Director Gabe Geschke stated that No Exit is a "well covered-up version of Jean-Paul Sartre's philosophy and his idea that humans attempt to make themselves look better so other people will look up to them." The characters in this play do exactly that; they torture each other with whatever hurts them the most, in order to deflect negative attention from them. Each fulfills his or her purpose by constantly reminding the others of their flaws and sins. Berg responds to this, screaming to the ceiling, "I'll endure anything, any torture but this agony of mind!"
The curtain falls on the insane laughter of Duval, Berg, and Livinich, as they realize that they are dead, and they face eternity in the same room with their two fellow torturers.
To me, it seemed that No Exit is about the worst of humanity; it indicates that people are not inherently good, but rather inherently self-serving, cowardly, and cruel. We can only hope that Sartre was wrong.
