Theater in Review: "Heroes and Cowards Are Made, Not Born"
By Wilborn Hampton
The New York Times, April 16, 2003

At the heart of Existentialism is the belief that every human being is responsible for his or her actions. The circumstances of one's life are, by and large, immaterial to the person he or she becomes. Nowhere does the Existentialist dogma face more intense scrutiny than in time of war, and Sartre's ''Men Without Shadows,'' which is being given a timely and commendable revival by Horizon Theater Rep, is a searing examination of the limits to which one's free will may be tested.

Written at the end of World War II, ''Men Without Shadows'' deals with five French Resistance fighters, four men and a woman, who have been taken prisoner after a failed operation that resulted in a massacre. Beyond the guilt of the knowledge that their failure caused the death of innocent civilians, they know they are about to be tortured and killed by their Vichy captors. Each agonizes over whether he or she will break, screaming in pain and revealing the whereabouts of their escaped leader, or beg for life.

It is not a play for the squeamish. There is torture and death. Sartre, who was no stranger to the harsh realities of war, does not flinch from presenting them onstage, and the director Simon Hammerstein and his brave cast of 11 present them unhesitatingly but without rubbing the audience's noses in gore.

The play is divided into four scenes: two in the cell where the prisoners are held and two in the interrogation room, where a portrait of Marshal Pétain looks down from the wall and the wireless broadcasts opera (appropriately, the second act of ''Tosca''). As one after the other is taken to be interrogated, each contemplates the available choices. Will I scream? Will I talk? Will I barter for my life? Will I leap from the window? The interrogators have their own questions, and the answers each -- prisoner and captor -- gives will define his or her life. Sartre gives every option a full hearing. For him no one is born a coward or a hero. As he wrote elsewhere, ''The coward makes himself cowardly, the hero makes himself heroic.''

The Horizon staging is not without problems. Mr. Hammerstein could pick up the pace of some scenes in which a ponderous quietude occasionally deflects the focus on the life and death issues under debate. And while some of the performances are not fully defined, each has its moments of raw emotion. David Wilson Barnes, Jordan Lage and Rik Walter are all good as the Vichy interrogators, and David B. Heuvelman, Rafael De Mussa and Hillary Keegin are consistently credible among the captives. But quibbles aside, this is an honest staging of a brutal play that is unfortunately very opportune. ''Men Without Shadows'' runs through April 19 at the 41 White Street, Lower Manhattan.