Do you remember NO EXIT? Do you remember The Good Place? Do you remember having to bluff your way through a book report in high school English class? Playwright Reginald T. Jackson does, and Sartre looms large over CRABS IN A BARREL like a disappointed ghost.
I’m going to be very generous to Jackson for a moment here and assume that despite the lack of any reference to Jean-Paul Sartre’s NO EXIT in any of the marketing or press, CRABS is at best a very close adaptation and at worst a remixed homage to one of the most famous works of existentialist literature. The alternative would be almost too brazen an act by a playwright, director, and theater that should know better, and one must imagine Jackson’s misdirection was subversive rather than malicious.
The premise of both plays is functionally identical, with Jackson’s script running very neatly as a direct parallel to many of the surface-level details of No Exit. Garcin is now named Maurice (Brian Patterson), Estelle is now Mary (Atiana Skokan), and Inèz has been renamed to Lillian (Asha Johnson). The bellhop has been cut, but perdition is still a drab one-room deal. There are still no mirrors, and that bronze sculpture has stuck around, but the order of arrival for our damned guests is now reversed, with Lillian (Still gay) already in the room as the play opens and Maurice entering at the top of page 1. Go read NO EXIT, doesn’t have to be in the original French, and you’ll have a solid grasp of the show.
Any further conversation about CRABS IN A BARREL can only exist within the context of its relationship to NO EXIT, and unfortunately Jackson isn’t doing himself any favors by constantly drawing parallels between the two. All great adaptations exist in conversation with the original, and Jackson has very little to say about Sartre or the philosophies he wrote on. As I said, many of the parallels run purely on a surface level; Key moments are stripped of the original depth, and Jackson injects very little substance back in. There’s one moment in both CRABS and NO EXIT where the door leading out swings open, and the ensemble is offered the choice to simply step away from their torment. In the original
Garcin finds himself unable to because he is trapped by his own shattered psychology. He would rather stay in this room, spend the rest of eternity in torment, than prove himself a coward. It’s a compelling moment, and interpreting or reinterpreting it is always a rite of passage for any good production of NO
EXIT. In CRABS IN A BARREL, on the other side of the door is a long, dark, spooky hallway, frightening Maurice and Mary into slamming the door.
An analysis of where the two stories differ doesn’t offer much either. Aside from small details, like the aforementioned lack of valet, there’s a smattering of major changes that range from impactful to head-scratching. Jackson takes care to update and round out all of the characters, and for the most part a lot of these decisions work. In Maurice, Garcin evolves from an adulterous coward to a hypocrite and a wife-beater, and is more explicitly characterized as a predator in his own right. Mary and Lillian are now more explicitly antagonistic towards each other as the plot explores the role of colorism in self-worth, desire, and how one sees and is seen. It’s a really powerful development from Sartre’s original text, but unfortunately doesn’t go far enough in its discussion. To their credit, Johnson, Skokan, and Patterson are giving star-worthy performances, and Kubbi in the director’s chair is very effective with turning the single room cell into a claustrophobic battlefield.
Not all of the deviations totally work, and a few impactful elements from the original are rendered inert in the transition. There are a few glaring examples, but the one that feels the most damaging is that much of the original tension-building through soft denial has been replaced by Maurice and Mary’s outright screaming refusal to acknowledge that they are dead and in hell. Inèz’s sadism has also been amplified to the Nth degree as Lillian is much more openly antagonistic towards her cellmates/tormentors. Sartre’s original is much broader, with the “Other people” in question usually interpreted as society writ large, or at least the constant eternal judgement of being exposed to another living person. To Jackson, it’s much more literal, hell is just some asshole who is going to be an obstinate dick to you for whatever reason. Lillian is also either a wizard or just cheating, because the other trait of Inèz’s that’s been exaggerated is her initial understanding and acceptance of the situation. Rather than deducing the nature of their torment, Lillian can just look at Maurice and immediately know he’s a violent spouse, or look at Mary and immediately tell that she drowned her newborn infant in a tub. Her intuitions get so absurd that I spent the entire show anticipating some sort of demonic twist, or deeper exploration of the mechanics of
hell (I mean, it’s right there, her name is literally derived from Lilith), but no, she just has an uncanny intuition. Must be a domestic abuser scented cologne.
Finally, the biggest and most glaring change from the original is that Mary and Maurice do make it out in the end. They fight, they fuck, and then through the power of friendship they’re able to walk out the door hand in hand. Lillian stays behind, too proud to admit she was wrong, and it’s the only other part of the script that’s at all interesting. The final moment of CRABS IN A BARREL is a grand rebuttal of Sartre’s original canon, but the journey to get there was just so arduous and vapid that all I’m left with is envy.
Hell is empty, and all the devils are other people.
The Independent Artists movement 