RUSSELL SIMMONS DEF POETRY JAM ON BROADWAY
Conceived by Stan Lathan and Mr. Simmons; directed by Mr. Lathan;
sets by Bruce Ryan; costumes by Paul Tazewell; lighting by Yael
Lubetzky; sound by Elton P. Halley; production stage manager, Alice
Elliott Smith; production manager, Theatersmith Inc.; executive
producer/general manager, Roy Gabay. Presented by Mr. Simmons and Mr.
Lathan, in association with Kimora Lee Simmons, Island Def Jam Music
Group, Brett Ratner and David Rosenberg. At the Longacre Theater, 220
West 48th Street, Manhattan.

WITH: Beau Sia, Black Ice, Staceyann Chin, Steve Colman, Mayda Del
Valle, Georgia Me, Suheir Hammad, Lemon, Poetri and Tendaji Lathan.

Untamed Poetry, Loose Onstage
By BEN BRANTLEY

Does Con Edison know about the cast of "Def Poetry Jam"? The
performers on the stage of the Longacre Theater, where the show
opened last night, are giving off enough electric current to keep
Manhattan in air-conditioning for a century of summers. The hard-
working choruses of musicals like "Thoroughly Modern Millie"
and "42nd Street" can dance until their shoes lose their taps, but
they still won't generate the energy found in this gathering of angry
young poets.

"Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway," to use the production's
full brand-name-wearing title, is the most singular offering in
mainstream New York theater these days, even in a season that has
seen such anomalies as "Movin' Out," Twyla Tharp's all-dancing, no-
talking pop musical, and the short-lived French bagatelle
called "Amour."

Produced by the eponymous Mr. Simmons, the mighty rap recording
emperor, "Def Poetry" is basically nothing more than nine people
standing onstage reciting poems they have written. But this
description, which summons clammy images of the classroom, fails to
factor in the incandescent mix of exuberance, arrogance and
exhibitionism with which each performer is invested.

The poets of "Def Poetry" flaunt their words the way Fosse dancers
flaunt their bodies, in muscle-flexing struts, slides and sashays.
Listen to the following declarations: "I wanna hear a poem where
ideas kiss similes so deeply that metaphors get jealous." "I'm the
mentally buff Chinese Hulk Hogan/ disciplined, determined and deadly."
And, "Spoken word is about to leave the ground like a plane, chain
ganging, clanging like a school boy with a pan."

These lines, like most in the show, sound better than they read. You
need to experience firsthand the body language that makes the verbal
language spin and the voices that seem to get high off their own
inflections. This is poetry for the stage, not the page, and it
exists completely only in the moment it is being performed.

People can complain that much of what is said in "Def Poetry Jam" is
aggressively preachy, on the one hand, and narcissistically whiny, on
the other. But don't let anyone tell you it's not theater.

Directed by Stan Lathan with a keen ear ‹ and, almost as important,
eye for flow and variety, "Def Poetry" is descended from the HBO
television specials of the same title. These in turn featured talent
culled from the cafes, theaters and cultural centers that stage
slams, competitive shows that turn the performance of poetry into an
athletic event.

(Such places, which range from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in New York
City to Da' Poetry Lounge in Los Angeles, are cited regularly in the
performers' biographies, which are, it can safely be said, unlike any
others found in a Playbill these days.)

You can put aside, however, any doubts that the particular skills on
display in "Def Poetry Jam" require the intimacy of a club or the
magnifying closeness of a television screen. All of the performers
are radioactive with stage presence, conferred partly by the hormonal
glow exclusive to the young and unwrinkled, partly by polemical
righteousness and partly by the immortal showbiz urge to show off.

The production, which takes place against Bruce Ryan's abstract
streetscape of a set, begins with the D.J. Tendaji Lathan spinning,
scratching and mixing records from the 1960's to the 21st century. He
finds the warmth in being cool, and he gets the audience's responsive
juices flowing without seeming to push for it. He also sets up a
throbbing pulse, a sort of freewheeling metronome for what will
follow.

Yet while they trade freely on the rhythmic reflexes made popular by
rap and hip-hop, the performers who slink and saunter into view don't
just roll along in familiar grooves. Steve Colman, the show's token
white-bread performer, may exclaim, "Rock 'n' roll's O.K./but hip-hop
is for the ages." But Black Ice, who dispenses evangelical
admonitions with charismatic casualness, dares to suggest that the
luxury-loving lyrics of some rap songs are more addictive and
dangerous than crack.

The show also features spirited homages to singers and musicians,
from Sam Cooke and Tito Puente (zestily performed by Mayda Del Valle
and Lemon) to Jam Master Jay, the Run-DMC disc jockey who was shot to
death last month. But while musical idols like Bob Marley and Prince
(as well as poets like Langston Hughes and June Jordan) are invoked,
the show has little of the studiously imitative gloss found among
singers on talent shows like "American Idol."

The poets all, for good or ill, exude self-created styles, which are
as distinctive as fingerprints. Rhyme and rhythm define character
in "Def Poetry Jam"; they are the tools for extracting a shape out of
the muddle of social, ethnic and physical forces that make human
identity. The form of poetry becomes a defense against formlessness.
To quote Staceyann Chin, a rail-thin Jamaican with a fat head of hair:

Imagination is the bridge between the things we know for sure and the
things we need to believe when our world becomes unbearable.

It allows Ms. Chin, who says that believing "in any God takes guts,"
to create a liturgical, magically intoned credo of "the smaller
things" in which she can believe.

Poetry also becomes the vehicle that lets a bulky, light-footed man
named (yes) Poetri, in times of stress, turn himself into Michael
Jackson (whose last name conveniently rhymes with "relaxin' ").

"My words," as described in a collaborative poem for three voices, are
variously "a reflection of possibility" (for Georgia Me), "the
Chinese tornado" (for Beau Sia) and "a flag" (for Suheir Hammad).

There is, you should know, a lot of flag waving in "Def Poetry Jam."
Diatribes against oppressors ‹ white running-dog capitalists in
general and George W. Bush and his associates in particular ‹ figure
prominently, and their content isn't much different from the
grievance lists of outraged students of the late 1960's. An exception
is Poetri, the show's droll natural comedian, who finds a Ku Klux
Klan-like conspiracy against the black man among the makers of Krispy
Kreme doughnuts.

Over all, the quotient of earnestness is definitely higher than that
of irony, which is kind of refreshing. For all the didacticism
in "Def Poetry," there's a thrill in seeing young people actually
work up steam about the sorry state of the world, not just their
sexual unattractiveness and weight problems, although there's a
certain amount of that as well.

And if it's content that makes "Def Poetry" worthy, to use a cringe-
making word, it's style that makes it entertainment. And it's the
diversity of styles, in artful counterpoint, that keeps the
production flying. Some of the poems, like Ms. Me's first-person
narrative about a beaten wife, have the ripping and sentimental
narrative verve of an old broadsheet ballad (the same style that is
wittily rehashed by Lemon in an account of an unexpected survivor of
the Titanic).

In literary terms, the statuesque Ms. Hammad, who describes herself
as a black woman who has become a Palestinian, and the wiry Lemon are
probably the most accomplished writers, with their gifts for slyly
changing and mixing cadences and tones. But literary values are
secondary here, and they don't account for the hypnotic, incantatory
music that Ms. Chin brings to her description of lovemaking or the
militant aestheticism that Mr. Sia transmits with his kung fu dandy
poses.

Mr. Lathan, the director, has paced "Def Poetry" with thematic
intelligence and old-fashioned showmanship, seasoning the evening
with poetic duets and trios as well as the expected arialike solos.
For the show's finale, all the performers are allowed to let rip at
the same time, and the Babel of voices that emerges is eerily
powerful. What you're hearing is a noise that seldom echoes through
the dusty corridors of Broadway anymore. It's the sound of youth
expressing itself, at its most intense and anxious and self-conscious
and self-delighted. Older folks may find it all a little intimidating
and even irritating. But how nice to smell springtime in the land of
mothballs.