Alicia Rice (L) Zoe Schwartz (R) in NO EXIT with Off the Wall
Jean Paul Sartre’s No Exit is an existentialist classic. Three people are locked in a room together for all of eternity. The vision of hell from 1944 is a disturbing now as it’s ever been. No iPhone. No Facebook. No wi-fi. Just three other people in a tiny room forever. Next month Off the Wall Theatre opens its stage to that hell.
The unique space of one of the smallest stages in Southeastern Wisconsin makes for a strikingly intimate venue for this sort of thing. Audiences will be sequestered with the three characters for 75 minutes of eternity in late summer. The characters are being played by Alicia Rice, Zoe Schwartz and Patrick McCann (in his last performance before going to the Bristol Old Vic theater school.) It’s a very tight cast in a very tightly-written piece of existentialist drama. With this summer being as intense as it is and the closed quarters Off the Wall being as snug as they are, this is a brilliant choice--the right play for the time and the perfect place for it. If this cast works as well together as it might, this production could be the highlight at the end of Milwaukee theater’s summer.
Off the Wall Theatre’s staging of No Exit runs Aug. 11 - 21 at Off the Wall’s space on 127 E. Wells St. For more information, visit Off the Wall online or call 414-484-8874.
