Behind You

Life grumbles, grazes and grates and causes pain but never quite enough to really hurt.

At least that's how my brain summarised a line from Jean-Paul Sartre's Huis Clos/No Exit what I 'ave just returned from.

Thanks to the internet the line is actually:

"Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough".

I am not saying I improved on his line. In fact I am giving the nod to Sartre on that one.

'Hell is other people' is his most famous concept.

I saw the play 20 years ago on the BBC with the recently late Omar Sharif. It has always lived with me largely I now think due to his charisma and a particularly memorable set. This production left me a little unshaken despite being very good.

Stirred is good.

Shaken is better. 

Neither... is just a quality production, which for me isn't really enough. "Quality" in itself is not high on my shopping list. It's generally too sanitised, interfered-with.

Bend me, shape me, anyway you want me

Long as I love it, it's all right. In fact, it's great.

Throughout the play, a female behind me, in my right ear as it were, squeezed what sounded like a brand new cheap PVC handbag, and twisted it repeatedly, as though she had no capacity to hear the "fingernails on windows" overture.

To hear either her bag or my agonising pain.

As I repeatedly drilled my karmic fist into her personal space, I noted that existentialism as a practical response lacked bite.

She started coughing. Perhaps trying to drown out the squeezing of the handbag that she simply would not rest on the floor.

The fires were getting hotter.

Enter stage left - the cough drop. You may know them better as the throat lozenge. Replete in the noisiest tin foil plastic. Not of course pre-loosened in its cage in expectation of use. And not released quickly. 

How many minutes does it take to unfurl a Strepsil?

Twelve. The answer is twelve.

I screamed at her psyche with every inflection of disapproval that a mute man facing in the wrong direction could muster.

Nothing.

I leaned forward to get closer to the play, sliding down her volume and increasing that of the performers.

I'll give you this one as well, Jean-Paul.

Hell is other people.