Review: Men Without Shadows
By Victor Gluck
Backstage

While the Iraqi war raged outside, inside at Downstairs @ The Flea, Jean-Paul Sartre's rarely seen 1946 French resistance tragedy, "Men Without Shadows," presented by Horizon Theatre Rep, asked some of the same moral questions still pertinent today. The timeliness of the play resonated in a story set in Nazi-occupied France in 1944 that only recently might have seemed remote. Kitty Black's 1949 translation has held up remarkably well.

In Simon Hammerstein's powerful production, this three-act play about five French resistance fighters imprisoned by French collaborationists is performed without intermission, making the story feel like it was happening in real time. The small space used for the jail cell scenes made things as claustrophobic for the characters as for the audience. Michael V. Moore's settings for the schoolhouse interrogation center added immeasurably to the play's realism.

Sartre asks existential questions: What price will the prisoners pay to keep their silence? What price will they pay if they talk? What price will their captors pay for torturing their secrets out of them? What responsibility does one have to the group? What responsibility does one have to one's self? "Men Without Shadows" is strong stuff, as it includes torture, rape, and murder — although some of this is heard from offstage.

The accomplished cast stood for representative types: Ted Schneider as the prisoner who breaks first, David B. Heuvelman as the stoic Greek freedom fighter, Hillary Keegin as the only woman, Denis Butkus as the frightened teenager, and Rafael De Mussa as the philosopher among them. Among their captors, Jordan Lage was the conflicted, sensitive one; Rik Walter was the ironic, humorous one; and David Wilson Barnes was the pragmatic, sadistic one. Jonathan Kells Phillips was charismatic as the resistance fighter brought in under a false name.