ME AND MY SHADOW.(Democracy)(Theater Review)

To be human is not to know one's self. The "I" that we confidently broadcast to the world is a fiction--a jerry-built container for the volatile unconscious elements that divide and confound us. In this sense, personal history and public history share the same dynamic principle: both are fables agreed upon. In his latest entertainment, "Democracy" (at London's Royal National Theatre), Michael Frayn circles around this conundrum. "Everyone has a range of possibilities and characters in themselves," Frayn said recently. "And the process of arriving at a common policy is curiously complex. A bit like a Cabinet making decisions. . . . There's a sort of democracy going on ...