Daily News from New York, New York • 353

flow entertainment tr i i i'i 1 1 1 i 1 1 it ft i ifi'l Ti'iTi'i 'i 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 THEATER REVIEW Panther leader springs to life in Roger Smith's poetic 'Story5 I WAVKStXI A EVER V-V. THE WITCH IvLq TWN SHE ANIONS TZWdgesn't By HOWARD KISSEL Daity News Drama Critic A HUEY P. NEWTON STORY. Written and Performed by Roger Guenveur Smith. Sound design by Marc Anthony Thompson.

Set and Lighting by David Welle. At the Joseph Papp Public. 0 WENT TO SEE A HUEY P. NEWTON Roger Guenveur Smith's piece about the Black Panther leader, with a friend whose heart is still So (Bead, She's Scary! FROM COVER in the '60s. I had hoped that his joy at seeing one of his heroes might counterbalance my aversion to spending an evening watching a thug.

(Mind you, in my book, Lenin was also a thug.) What makes Smith's piece exciting is that neither of our expectations was fulfilled. What Smith presents is not easily stereotyped categories but a full, complex and ultimately broken human being. My friend, I suspect, was disappointed not to see a portrait of Huey as a folk hero. I was relieved not to be confronted with '60s sloganeering. When we first see Smith's Newton, he is surprisingly witty and sharp but equally surprisingly shy and ill at ease, his legs twitching as he speaks.

Responding to the charge that the Black Panthers are violent, he says, "Hey, existence is violent I exist, therefore I am violent It's hypocritical to try to claim otherwise in the same way that these vegetarians are hypocritical when they tell you they're not harming anything. A carrot screams also." The tone is gentle, almost tentative. This is a man finding his voice, not yet a man who modifies his voice to suit the needs of the media. As the evening progresses. Smith becomes more confident more cocky.

But the Newton Smith presents is never simply a man mouthing slogans. During the period he is in prison, he declares that "this is just a little prison; the big prison is on the outside," and follows this bit of rhetoric with an elegant quote from Dryden. In the course of the evening, we see Newton lose control. The mind that understood how to seduce the public no longer seems capable of making challenging assertions. By the end, Newton is no longer intel-lectualizing.

He's telling us about Black Orpheus and, at the very end, when he's less and less coherent he's reciting the lines from "Macbeth" about "a tale told by an idiot" The journey Smith takes us on is unsettling, even harrowing. The depiction of physical and mental breakdown overshadows whatever political messages Newton delivers. The piece has been artfully lit and Marc Anthony Thompson has created a rich tapestry of accompanying sounds and music, but it all hinges on the artistry of Smith. He has a musical voice and a body that communicates powerfully; he takes a life that might have lent itself to facile commentary or controversy and makes it deeply poetic and moving. teen, who lives in the Flatlands section of Brooklyn with her grandmother, Carrie.

In fact, Lovell never expected her entry to be chosen. But the junior at James Madison High School beat out nearly 500 other contestants. Her story, 'The Witch's Rock," is about two kids who are granted three wishes by a witch. They learn a big lesson: Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it Straight off, "Ghost Story Club" writer Allan Zullo knew he had a winner. "She showed the creativity and imagination we were looking for," says Zullo, who boiled her six-page story down to seven strips.

"No one else thought of that particular idea, and it read very fluidly." For Lovell, such recognition came as a complete surprise. "I screamed!" at the news of winning, she recalls. "It is the first time I have won something. I really didn't think I was going to win. And I didn't want to put my hopes on it, because I didn't want to be disappointed." Now that it's all said and done, however, Lovell can't help but reconsider her story's moral.

Getting what you wish for isn't always so bad. "I guess it's not always true. I still believe in that saying but only sometimes." (Avasthiis on The News' editorial staff.) NO STEREOTYPE: Roger Guenveur Smith as the Black Panther leader U2 FOaEnrafitnig a (SEaoite Step By DAVID HINCKLEY Daily News Staff Writer URROUNDED BY THE SOFT Si i I Valentine colors and fuzzy love dolls of Kmart, Irish rockers U2 tit That image "won't go away, will it?" asked lead singer Bono. "I'll always be the with the white flag, won't Yesterday he challenged the image by wandering through the crowd of reporters at the band's half-hour press conference in the Astor Place Kmart, sitting in one reporter's lap and passing out underwear and toys from a Kmart shopping cart The band opened the press conference by playing "Holy Joe," the flip side of its new single "Discotechque." The sound wasn't great by concert standards, but for the ground floor of a Kmart it wasn't bad at all. The tour opens April 25 in Las Vegas, then works its way East The set will be a golden arch, tickets will average $45 and guitarist The Edge says he expects the music will include approximately eight new songs.

yesterday announced a year-long tour that will bring them to Giants Stadium on May 31, a Saturday. Tickets for that show and others on the tour go on sale tomorrow at 8 p.m. over MTV and VH1, tour sponsors. Remaining tickets go on sale starting Saturday morning at Ticketmaster. Because the band has seven off-days after Giants Stadium, it is expected at least one more show will be added.

The tour supports the new album "Pop," which has a somewhat more dance-oriented rhythm. Band members say the title is their latest bid to dismantle their image as the world's most humorless rock 'n' rollers. a. cr 5 fi 3 PRO BONO CASES: The fans are delighted as U2's Bono meets and greets at a Kmart press conference announcing the group's upcoming tour..