NEW YORK — Stephen Lang comes to "Beyond Glory" armed with a long military tradition: playing Stonewall Jackson in "Gods and Generals," originating the Jack Nicholson part in "A Few Good Men" and acting as a spit-and-polish officer in John Patrick Shanley's recent "Defiance."

Now, the muscular and commanding actor takes a virtuoso turn, transforming himself into eight Medal of Honor winners, including Hawai'i's Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, in the one-man show he wrote. "Beyond Glory" is playing through Aug. 19 at the Laura Pels Theatre in New York, presented by the Roundabout Theatre Company.

Adapted from a book of interviews by Larry Smith, and directed with bravura touches by Robert Falls, the show is a telling choice at this moment of our history.

Focusing on heroes in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, this is theater that cuts two ways. The decorated heroes, who include Rear Adm. James Bond Stockton and 2nd Lt. Inouye, behaved with valor but also with brutality. Although ostensibly a tribute to the glory of battle, Lang's play and his performance are charged with moral ambiguity.

Most of the men overflow with machismo. But they are not braggart warriors of classical comedy, and many, in fact, are quite modest about the actions that won them the medal. The citations are read by offstage voices, while the heroes downplay their super-fighter acts.

The heroes include five working-class white men, two black men and a Japanese-American, the future Sen. Inouye.

Lang opens the 80-minute play as Navy Lt. John William Finn, recalling the interruption of his plans to enjoy "some love with my beautiful wife" on a Sunday morning at the Kane'ohe Bay Naval Air Station on Dec. 7, 1941. A jocular man's man, Finn tells of joining up as a kid in 1926, and of his meeting with his adored Alice after his return from China in 1932.

Finn then jumps forward to the day when he "secured and manned a .50-caliber machine gun in a completely exposed area, which was under heavy enemy machine-gun strafing fire," according to the voice of the military. Then Finn takes up the story.

Seeing that the air attack had reduced "every plane on the field to a rubble of smoke and melted aluminum," he fired at the Japanese Zeros for "the next two hours and a half ... " He says he was "madder than hell — I wasn't being courageous," then tells of his decoration and retirement.

"That's my story," he ends. "Good one, ain't it?"

Lang dons an Ike jacket and a beret to become Army Capt. Lewis L. Millet, whose day of glory came Feb. 7, 1951, in Korea. This segment is the most brutal. Leading the charge, he says, "I got three of 'em, the first two in the throat. The third, I lunged, and the bayonet went into his forehead like a watermelon."

Vice Adm. James B. Stockdale, Ross Perot's running mate in 1992, tells his story of being a prisoner of war at the Hanoi Hilton. Wearing a light jacket and using a folding stool, he gives a low-key account of bravery and defiance in the face of torture.

Lang's parade of honor ends with two minority warriors, Army 1st Lt. Vernon J. Baker, a black man, and the Japanese-American Army 2nd Lt. Inouye. The final two testimonies deepen the tenor of the evening, with tales of racial bigotry during World War II, the time of the "greatest generation." Lang's reading of an Army War College study of "the Negro," is particularly appalling.

Inouye, who lost part of an arm in a battle near San Terenzo, Italy, had watched with his father as the Japanese bombed Hawai'i. He tells his story against the backdrop of the internment of so many of his people. He himself was able to choose "boot camp instead of concentration camp."

Throughout his solo performance, Lang adopts many accents and postures. Sometimes roaring, sometimes quiet, it is a performance of many parts, an act of its own heroism.