If you’re a virgin to the annual running of EOP, then I can simplify things by defining the production as three short one-act plays. In this year’s case Making Nice, No Exit, and Cut. What follows is a brief synopsis of each of this year’s productions, making this EOP the Players’ 241st production.

Arriving at the RPI Playhouse, there was a small audience of assorted students, parents, and community members waiting in the lounge. Shortly thereafter people began filing into the house where chairs and risers were set up for a larger audience than was present. I imagine the previous night’s opening was much more crowded, but in a way I enjoyed the smaller audience atmosphere.

Starting the first play, Alan Haehnel’s comedy Making Nice opened with a dark stormy background, complete with a mysterious looking timpani player, Rick Casey. Characters dressed as the wind and other natural elements whirled about the stage somewhat haphazardly, and soon a frightened damsel in distress type, portrayed by Gale Hauck entered.

In the middle of the scene someone suddenly screamed for the play to came to a dead stop, the lights come up, and the actors waited idly. Matthew Harris, playing the director of this play within a play, Robert, stormed onto the stage ranting and raving about his incompetent actors.

Soon after verbally abusing his players, who are completely unprepared for the opening performance in a day, and threatening his stage manager Ellen, played by Maureen Keefer, Robert stormed off stage to use the bathroom. Ellen calmly but strictly tried to arrange the cast in a semi circle, while from behind the audience appeared two new characters.

Introduced as Marly and Stewart, George Van Osterom, and Craig Lampert respectively were two representatives of OSHA’s Theatre Division—amusingly deemed OSHAT. Marly, dressed in high-waters and a jacket, just a little too tight, and his assistant Stewart, a stereotypical “theatre junkie,” if you will, have come to ensure the “emotional safety” of the performers.

Not ready to see Robert’s production go down in flames, Ellen convinces the two OSHAT reps to stay and supervise as Robert works on changing his rule breaking ways. What follows is an act of sheer will power on Robert’s behalf, assuring many laughs from the spectators. Overall, Making Nice was a very good performance, leading the audience into a short intermission with George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in high spirits.

The next one act would be where my feeling of hell begins—literally. A scene change places the audience in an open room with putrid red painted walls, three tattered sofas, and a fireplace with an onyx bust. This is the opening for the French existentialist, Jean-Paul Sartre’s bizarre yet philosophical take on Hell, No Exit.

Coming through the scene’s one door, a “boy,” played by Joseph Faust, leads a man named Garcin, dressed in a suit, played by Michael Hall, into the room. Leaving him, the boy later brings two women, Inez and Estelle, played by Jessica Menrath and Joanna Springer, to accompany Garcin.

Eventually it was revealed through long and somewhat complicated dialogue that the three characters were deceased, or “absent” as Estelle preferred to say, being a dignified aristocrat. The three strangers—Garcin a reporter from Paris, Estelle, and Inez, a woman tormented by her sexuality during a very illiberal generation—have been brought to this locked room in hell, and have nothing but each other—unfortunately we learn each is the other’s tormentor.

While the deep message woven into this piece is one of human nature questioning to confirm human existence, I think the length of it overall put it somewhat out of place amongst the other two acts. I must commend the actors on their dramatic performances though, which were thoroughly convincing, and Faust’s short but completely eerie performance made me believe he was the devil himself.

After another run of Rhapsody in Blue, the third act, Ed Monk’s comedy Cut, began in a scene set in a small living area. The action started with Carrie DePetris and Jonathan Janssen entering the room discussing the affair they are having, when déjà vu strikes and “Cut!” is heard from in the audience.

It turns out this piece has strong ties with both of the previous pieces. Cut bombarded the audience with a play within a play within a play within a play, and so on and so forth. In fact, I lost count. Complimenting No Exit, the performance left all the characters involved wondering who they were, where they lived, and what the meaning of their lives were—essentially Hell, no?