Theatre UNB’s first production of the 2018-19 season features a pair of renowned one-act plays inspired by existentialist philosophy and the Theatre of the Absurd.
In award-winning British playwright Tom Stoppard’s metatheatrical comedy The Real Inspector Hound, a pair of theatre critics watching a hilariously bad Agatha Christie-style locked-door murder mystery are drawn one by one into the world of the play. As the lines between the stage and the audience become increasingly blurred and the body count starts to rise, the critics discover that the play world is all too real, and that there are fatal consequences for their sins of envy, pride, and lust.
In Nobel Prize-winning writer and existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, three strangers find themselves locked in a room in hell with not a rack or flaming pit of fire in sight, wondering why they’ve been placed together. As they begin to confess the sins that have brought them there, it quickly becomes apparent what their eternal torment will be: each other.
Directed by Len Falkenstein, with technical direction by Mike Johnston, The Real Inspector Hound and No Exit will be produced and performed by the twelve students of UNB’s Drama 2173 class.
The plays will be staged as a twin-bill with three performances, Thursday, November 29th through Saturday, December 1st, 7:30 nightly, at Memorial Hall on the UNB campus. Tickets ($12 regular, $10 for seniors and the underemployed, and $8 for students) will be available at the door. For more information, email lfalken@unb.ca, phone 506 447-3078, or view the event page.
