44 Minutes ★★★★

Four men wake up in an electrified cage, trapped. A digital clock counts down how much time — the titular 44 Minutes — they have before they must render a decision demanded by an unseen voice: one person must be chosen to die so that the other three may live.

Unlike too many Fringe shows, those 44 minutes go by very, very quickly. And if you’re paying attention beforehand, you know before the show that it’s an hour in length, so an inherent mystery builds underneath the obvious one: What’s going to happen in those last 16 minutes after a decision is made?

The Front Room at Assembly, now on St. Andrew Square because of the recent fire on Prince Street, is the perfect venue for this existential thriller: tight, hot, borderline claustrophobic. It’d be a great space for No Exit, and this show is clearly inspired by that classic; it’s Sartre on speed. Moral judgments based on little have to be made, and quickly.

Perhaps too quickly. The timer is excitingly dramatic, but as the men unravel the situation and reveal what they want the others to know about themselves, some of it feels too hurried. It’s possible even more tension would be created by a longer running time for the discoveries to happen. Rarely does anyone think something could benefit by being longer, but this reviewer would not have minded if the show were titled 54 Minutes.

The excellent ensemble — John Billingsley, Dorian Missick, Christopher Ryan, and Matthew Patrick — makes it all vividly credible, and director Michael DeFilippis ensures that the show’s intensity never lessens. 44 Minutes is a first play by Lev Steinberg, who wrote the play at 17, and it’s a most impressive debut that actually does have substance to back its attention-grabbing setting.