STAGE REVIEW : ‘Children’ Attacks Homophobia in High Style

A troupe of talented, comparatively unknown African-American artists, working out of a bunker-like building in central L.A., are lighting a musical torch in honor of black gays and lesbians called “Children of the Night.”

Directed and choreographed with wit, precision and abundant emotion by Stephen Semien, the show is the maiden stage production at the Brock Peters Communications Bridge Institute. Normally a TV-film workshop, the facility has suddenly turned into a throbbing center of theatrical life.

Unlike many dramatizations of the gay community that have been shrill, noble or full of protest, “Children of the Night” is no weepy lamentation. It’s a “choreopoem” that attacks homophobia with spirited ferocity and a devastating humor.

If Semien is anything, he’s a showman. Time after time, most hilariously in a number between two little girls playing hopscotch and marbles and talking about sex in the dumb, uncomprehending way children do, the show makes a scalding statement about sexual bigotry while making sure to entertain you first.

One of the aforementioned little girls, in a pink silk goldilocked dress and shiny black shoes, is played, amazingly enough, by an adult, Kimberly Q. Purnell, who is uncanny as the scrappy little girl trying to understand what a “les bean” is. Later she segues into the hunched image of a crone, but most of the time she commands attention as a leggy, high-stepping dancer with drop-dead looks.

The 14-member cast bobs with waves of talent; among the most striking is Larry (Bobcat) Jeffries. Adorned in a black slip, wig and high heels, he unfurls the incandescent song, “Miss IT,” which may be the first musical explanation of why some macho-conditioned men can make love to other men only as long as they’re in drag.

Jeffries next mercurially materializes into an intimidating dude who looks as if he just stepped off a diesel truck. Basic to all these performers, and emblematic of Semien’s dance background, is their skill with body language.

The production’s nominal weakness is its book, which deals with the squalor, endurance and dignity of the titled children of the night--”children” being here a euphemism for the sexually oppressed. But while the narrative may be ragged, the zest and sheen of the performances overwhelm the production’s potholes.

“Heartbreak Hotel,” empowered by the peeling notes of vocalist Sarah Baldwin, features six muscular male dancers in wispy Fredericks of Hollywood attire--the perfect follow-up to a sketch in which three irate parents categorically deny their offspring are “well, that way . . . He(she) couldn’t be mine!”

The second act takes a detour to a neighborhood church with the gospel-soaring, golden-robed cast pumping out “The Blood of Jesus” (music by the New Jersey Mass Choir), led by a ringing exhortation for tolerance delivered in the manner of a verbal pinwheel by Michael Neal’s hyperventilating reverend.

The show, redundantly (and terribly) subtitled “Timeless Secrets of a Rebellious Breed Exposed,” is helping raise funds for AIDS-related and other social service needs.

Security parking is available; don’t be turned off by the towering, wire-mesh fence. This theater is more alive than most.

* “Children of the Night,” Brock Peters Communications Bridge Institute, 1968 W. Adams Blvd. Fridays-Sundays, 8 p.m., Sunday matinees, 3 p.m. Ends Dec. 26. $17.50. (213) 293-5619. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.