Huis Clos

In today’s world of reality TV and instant celebrity, Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1943 vision of a place of damnation in which one of the greatest torments is that there are no mirrors feels chillingly prescient. “Hell is other people” when their faces, distorted by lust, fear or self-deception, are the only … Continue Reading Huis Clos

Kingdom of Earth

There’s an exquisite cruelty to Tennessee Williams’s work; a lacerating nostalgia for a seamy and corrupted South that pities no one. The rarely-performed Kingdom of Earth, which condenses this sneering despair into a claustrophobic three-hander, offers as little respite to the audience as the pile of earth on stage does to … Continue Reading Kingdom of Earth