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Musical Theater Opens With A Bang At Picnic HouseBY DAVID L.L. LASKINConfronting the Ku Klux Klan has probably never before been the stuff of entertaining musical theater on a Sunday afternoon in the park. At least never before last Sunday, October 19, when poet June Jordan and composer Adrienne Torf brought their exhilarating %u201cBang Bang Uber Alles%u201d to the Prospect Park Picnic House as part of Celebrate Brooklyn%u2019s fall music series.The setting: a northern city. The tim e: now. The KKK just lynched a gay black man. A few weeks earlier, white supremacists massacred a family they believed to be Jewish. A civil liberties lawyer, who had once gone to court to defend the Klan%u2019s right to march, brings together a group of young performing artists, who decide to produce a show protesting the attacks and take it %u201cuptown%u201d to the Klan%u2019s own turf.Confronting the Klan proves to be the key to a Pandora%u2019s box of ethnic tensions and personal dilemmas among the artists. This is one of the show%u2019s strengths. Instead of a facile dramatic diatribe against minoritybashers, %u201cBang Bang%u201d picks apart the good guys, revealing the hopes and frustrations beneath their good intentions.It goes even further by humanizing the butchers. Tom (Don Goodspeed), a young white man, is both son of the local Klan leader and friend to one of the black artists. He drove the car the night of the lynching, and he helps the group produce their show %u201cuptown.%u201d Tom%u2019s powerful prologues %u2014 solo songs that open the two acts %u2014 were sung with a convincing mix of determination, confusion and desperation by Goodspeed. They provide a chilling backdrop to this morality play that eschews obviousjudgements of good and evil for the more meaty and provocative drama of real, fallible people doing what they can in the face of hatred and violence.DRAMA NOT BLACK AND WHITE From the looks of the cast of this playwithin-a-play %u2014 blacks, Jews, WASPs and latinos, men and women %u2014 the drama is anything but black and white. Myriam (Linda Reyes), a latino, is needed to buffer the blacks and Jews, who, in Patricia (DonaldWhat ultimately makes 4BangBang' work is not that it's a greattheory, but that it's a greatmusical. The music is not eclecticfor its own sake. It's broughtJordan's words to life.Nelson) and Buddy (Andre Morgan) are like brother and sister, while Darryl (Stanley Mathis) and Sam (David Peusner) are at each other%u2019s throats.And what musical would be complete without romance? Another credit to Jordan and Torf for portraying women who are strongly independent both in their daily lives and their love lives without sacrificing their interests in the opposite sex.What ultimately makes %u201cBang Bang%u201d work is not that it%u2019s a great theory but that it%u2019s a great musical. Torf%u2019s classy mixed bag of show tunes, gospel, salsa, funk, vaudeville and opera are a joy to the ears. And the music is not eclectic for its own sake, it has brought Jordan%u2019s words to life in a way that is wonderfully original, yet so natural you%u2019d think the songs couldn%u2019t have come out any other way.poetry, the former telling the story and the latter fleshing out the raw, cacophonous feelings and images it invokes. Each song carves out its own little niche %u2014 whether sarcastic or hopeful, tragic or romantic.In the opening number the artists admit %u201cI really do care when I can ... pay the rent,%u201d both mocking and lamenting their struggle within the commercial culture. A number scored with exaggerated Elizabethan aplomb deplores and makes fun of the law%u2019s conspiratorial negligence with the Klan. In a hilarious but ultimately sad song, Darryl (Stanley Mathis) whips out a funky rap on how he sent his extra food stamps to the President and Nancy Reagan.SOME SERIOUS SONGSThere are also some very serious, reflective and heart-wrenching numbers, dotting the energetic landscape as solemn reminders of the real tragedy and the real threat posed by vicious hatred. Buddy, a close friend of the lynched man, reveals the pain of his loss and vulnerability in several stirring songs. Finally accepting a white woman putting his words to music, Darryl and Patricia sing the poetic and soulful %u201cSong of Soweto.%u201d In a closing duet, Tom and Buddy, white supremacist and black target, find themselves singing the same tune, a shattering cry against the system that victimizes them both.Not every song in %u201cBang Bang%u201d is a blockbuster. Some of the lyrics, ideas and relationships in the plot are too obviously devices to tell the story, hurried into the script to get from point A to point B. Some of the tunes don%u2019t take the libretto very far. In light of what Jordan and Torf have accomplished, though %u2014 creating a piece ofmusical theater that is equally insightful and provocative as it is exhilarating and entertaining %u2014 the flaws are minor.It says something that this staged reading, with no sets or choreography, had the packed Picnic House crowd applauding throughout the show and on its feet at the end. The cast, also including Michele Mais and Kate Fuglei, turned in a gutsy performance. And the musicians %u2014 Torf on piano and synthesizers, Carol Chaikin on reeds and flute and Jay Norem on drums %u2014 delivered plenty of sound and responded to the wildly diverse moods of the music.The show premiered with a full production in Atlanta, Georgia last spring. For now, Brooklyn audiences will have to imagine the impact of a full-scale version of the words and music that sparked the crowd last Sunday.M usicians O n StrikeThe Brooklyn Philharmonic, paralyzed by a musicians strike, will not play their scheduled concert on October 26. Instead, Celebrate Brooklyn audiences will hear soloists performing Latin American and Spanish composers, Sunday at 3pm in the Prospect Park Picnic House.After long negotiating sessions last Friday and Monday, New York City%u2019s striking classical freelance musicians, of the American Federation of Musicians, local 802, will vote on October 27 on management%u2019s current offer. 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