(Morts Sans Sepulture)
by Jean-Paul Sartre
Translated by Kitty Black
Directed by Mitchell Moreno
Cast includes: Martin Behrman. Charlie Covell. David Couch. Andrew Fallaize. Kevin Heaney. Sam Hodges. Jamie Lennox. Lawrence McGrandles Jnr. George Rainsford. Stephen Sobal.

[ rediscoveries season 2007 ]
13 June – 7 July, 2007

The first production in our [ rediscoveries season 2007 ] will be Jean-Paul Sartre’s Men Without Shadows, marking the sixtieth anniversary of the original London production – and the first time the play has been seen in London since then.

In occupied France in 1944, five resistance fighters are captured after a disastrous attempt to liberate a village. One by one, they are summoned for interrogation by their captors. What will be the value of staying silent, and what the price of talking?

With richly drawn characters and a gripping plot, Sartre explores the nature of truth and freewill in the brutal and morally ambiguous time of war. First staged in London by Peter Brook in 1947, this rediscovered existential thriller is as potent and provocative today as it was then.

Jean-Paul Sartre gained overnight fame in 1938 with his first novel, La Nausee (Nausea). On the outbreak of the Second World War, he was drafted into the French army and was later captured and held by the Germans as a prisoner of war for nine months. Returning to Paris on his release in 1941, Sartre participated in the creation of the underground group Socialisme et Liberte along with his life-long companion Simone de Beauvoir, and regularly contributed to resistance magazines. After the war he established the review Les Temps Modernes and began prolific, full-time writing, ranging from philosophy to literary criticism, autobiography and drama. Perhaps best known in his lifetime as a playwright, his concept of being, existentialist humanism, can be traced throughout his body of plays including Les Mouches (The Flies) and Huis Clos (No Exit). Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964, but declined it in protest at the values of bourgeois society.

Exciting young director Mitchell Moreno’s credits include Hippolytus (Orange Tree), The Paper Piano (Edinburgh Festival), and two fully staged song cycles: Russian Romance (Barbican) and Chelsea Romance (Oktober Theatre, St Petersburg.) As an assistant and resident director, he has worked for the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and in the West End, with directors including Stephen Daldry, Michael Attenborough and Greg Doran.

Post-Show Discussion, Thursday 21 June - University of Essex Modern Drama Lecturer Clare Finburg, and Men Without Shadows director Mitchell Moreno discuss the social and political context of Jean-Paul Sartre's World War II existential thriller.

The Press on Men Without Shadows

**** 4 stars Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard

**** Four Stars Jonathan Gibbs, Time Out

***** 5 stars Richard Woulfe, UKTheatre Network

“RED-HOT TOPICAL” Norman Tozer, Rogues and Vagabonds

“Heartbreaking simplicity” Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard

“All credit to the Finborough...for reviving this painful little play for the first time in London for 60 years.” Sarah Hemming, Financial Times

“It's astonishing that this taut, relevant play hasn't been seen in London for 60 years.”
Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard

“A worthy revival” Sarah Hemming, Financial Times

“Don’t be put off by thinking that Sartre is difficult or inaccessible – this is a play for everyone.” Richard Woulfe, UKTheatre Network

“The Finborough's Rediscoveries season is living up to its title.”
Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard

“Please, especially if you believe you know how the world should behave today, don’t be a woolly liberal, see this play and face up to the complexity of our current problems. The insights you may get, like some scenes in the play, will be troubling.”
Norman Tozer, Rogues and Vagabonds

“Men Without Shadows at the Finborough is gripping and well executed”
Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard

““A well-conceived and well-acted drama...Numerous memorable moments” Richard Woulfe, UKTheatre Network

“The Finborough is close to being a perfect setting for Sartre's lost work, Men Without Shadows.” Adam Dobson, Music OMH

“The production demonstrates that brutality not only brutalises (both sides) but also ultimately produces fear, anarchy and a rotting of minds and spirit.”
Norman Tozer, Rogues and Vagabonds

“Excellent material here to ponder on amongst other things, freedom, heroism, good and evil.” Richard Woulfe, UKTheatre Network

“It's salutary, sometimes, to be harrowed by an evening's theatre. Jean-Paul Sartre's gripping drama of a group of French Resistance fighters interrogated by heavies of the Vichy regime certainly doesn't shy away from unrelenting human suffering.”
Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard

“This is Sartre at his most incisive and unforgiving.”
Hugh Chapman, Extra! Extra!

“Sartre also is a philosopher who can write good drama.”
Richard Woulfe, UKTheatre Network

“Most memorable, though, are the author’s thoughts”
Richard Woulfe, UKTheatre Network

“Mitchell Moreno’s production is strong and clear”
Jonathan Gibbs, Time Out

“Mitchell Moreno's assured production” Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard

“A superb cast.”
Richard Woulfe, UKTheatre Network

“Fine, dignified performances from Kevin Heaney, Charlie Covell and Jamie Lennox as the central trio of maquisards.”
Jonathan Gibbs, Time Out

“George Rainsford is also impressive as François”
Adam Dobson, Music OMH

“Charlie Covell's fierce Lucie bears her suffering so proudly that her torturers are baffled.” Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard

“I was particularly impressed by David Couch and Andrew Fallaize as interrogators, and Charlie Covell and Kevin Heaney among the captives”
Richard Woulfe, UKTheatre Network

“It’s a fantastic moment when the scene first shifts from the sombre upstairs room, with its serious, decidedly philosophical good guys, to the collaborationist baddies downstairs” Jonathan Gibbs, Time Out

“Mamoru Iriguchi’s inspired stage design” Adam Dobson, Music OMH

“Marks to designer Mamoru Iriguchi” Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard

“Mamoru Iriguchi’s neat design” Sarah Hemming, Financial Times