Mirrors. We use them every day, find them in all sort of obvious locations. One could almost say that we even take mirrors for granted, simply assuming that they will always be there when we need them. But what if you were never to see a mirror again – could never glance at a reflective surface as you walk past, making sure your tie or lipstick is straight, nor spend hours perfecting your hair? Surely you would be self conscious at first, but we can assume that if no one had a mirror, we could let things like crooked ties and stray broccoli crowns bother us much less.
Estelle Delaunay is not one of those people. Remove her mirror and you have removed her soul. Remove her mirror and she becomes uncontrollably panicked. Estelle, as the great philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre might have explained, exists, but her essence is in her mirror. The critical tenant of Sartre’s existentialism is, of course, that humans exist first and then define their essence. Estelle is one of three characters is Sartre’s classic work in the theatre of the absurd, “No Exit,” now at the Warehouse Theatre, staged by the Scena Theatre Company. Portrayed with prim snootiness by Maura Stadem, Estelle at first refuses to accept her new situation, and requests that her roommates refer to their present state as “absence.” “If we absolutely must give a name to this state of affairs,” she sniffs, “let’s call it ‘absence.”
But her companions have no such illusions, immediately accepting the fact that they are indeed, in hell – even though it looks like a sitting room furnished with Second Empire furniture. Inez Serrano (Elle Wilhite) was a lesbian postal clerk, while the sole man, Vincent Cradeau (Regen Wilson), was a journalist who treated his wife with ultimate cruelty. The banality of the room in which they are placed emphasizes Sartre’s belief that hell is not a specific physical location, but a state of mind. Sartre wrote and first performed “No Exit” in 1944, 3 months before the liberation of Paris by Allied Forces and surely, living under Nazi occupation must have seemed a hell on earth to him.
