Last weekend, on Saturday, it was Mer’s day. She started it off well by taking me out to lunch down in the Valley, at Pub Bricco. They are well known for their unusual burgers; Mer got an unusual one, I got a standard one. The meal was excellent.

Since we were down in the Valley, after lunch, Mer decided we should go walk the jogging trail at Sand Run park. It was a nice day, so we had a pleasant walk of about two miles, and then we headed home. Mer let me take a much-needed nap, so that I could be awake for the evening outing.

In the evening, Mer took me up to Cleveland, to Cleveland State University, to a small theater on campus. The students were putting on Sartre’s No Exit, a play which is rarely performed. It is an existentialist play, depicting three people trapped in Hell, which turns out to be a single room shared by three people who almost immediately get on each other’s nerves. The play follows the evolution of the various relationships of the three people.

The production did an excellent job with the material. The play is almost all talking and almost no action, and yet the director managed to keep my attention for all but a brief spell early in the second act. The stage in the theater was small, so there was not even much room for the actors to move around, so the entire production did a good job of conveying the feeling of being trapped. The set was a simple room, but the walls were over fifteen feet high, which also added to the claustrophobia of the production. It was a well-done and thought-provoking production, and I am glad I got to see it.

We stuck around afterwards for a talk-back meant for the actors and crew. An independent theater reviewer gave the cast and crew constructive feedback, and that seemed to go over well. He was largely positive, but still had helpful things to say to the individual actors. It was interesting to get a glimpse into the process of theater from a professional point of view. After the talk-back, we headed home – we did indeed have an exit, and the theater department at CSU will too – they are moving into a new space in a few months, so they only have one more production (The Tempest) in the smaller space.