Act II, Section 3 of Louis Slotin
Sonata:
Side note: This is the infamous "Neutron Craze" song-and-dance number that audience members and critics either adored or hated. In the L.A. production, it literally brought the house down. In New York, I felt it was a little hastily and sloppily blocked, and the older crankier cast, so much more adept at the dramatic scenes, just didn't have what it took to sell it.
Surely there are those within both the scientific and Jewish communities that find the very notion of Louis Slotin casting himself as Mengele and then doing a dance number as inherently offensive. To them I can only shrug and say what I said at the Los Alamos symposium/reading of the play: I believe that in our darkest moments, we cast ourselves in dreams and halucinations as the most evil character we can imagine. Surely, for Slotin, an earnest Jew and excellent scientist, Mengele fits this bill.
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(. . . . Fade to black.
Lights rise as Slotin, disguised as Mengele, enters.)
SLOTIN: My name is Josef Mengele, and I am alive. I escaped across two continents and I have swum the Sea of Japan. I am standing at this moment at the exact center of an ancient seaport. I am waiting for a train. My subordinates have arranged everything. A boxcar will open and a fat man will step down. He is to deliver secrets to me involving time and space and that which is neither time nor space.
(The engines of a lone bomber drone high above.)
The neither space nor time has come.
(A single bomb whistles as it drops overhead.)
RADIO ANNOUNCER: Ladies and Gentlemen, dead/alive from ground zero at the Slotin Memorial Family Ballroom, the "Docktor" is in! It's Joey Mengele and his Quantum Mechanic Dancers!
(A spotlight beams on Slotin dressed as a 1940's swing bandleader. He does the following intro in the sprechgesang or 'spoken song' style of Weimar cabaret. The song that follows can be sung to Glen Miller's "In the Mood", or an original swing piece. As the music heats up, swing dancers jump, bounce and spin like so many sub-atomic particles.)
INTRO: Oh when a speedy neutron collides
Mit atomic nuclei
He strips away a proton
From his beloved electron
No one really knows why.
And when this displaced proton ricochets
In a blaze of cosmic rays,
Conserving ze momentum
Our neutron has just lent him
He's dancing the Neutron Craze.
VERSE 1: It's all thermodynamic
It's not a fluke, it's not a trick.
Fermi found a way to flick
Neutrons into some nuclei-ick.
Whats that sound? It's quite a lick.
The little blip that's awful quick.
It isn't tock. It isn't tick.
It's something sorta like a click.
Watch how all the particles fly.
Don't ask how and don't ask why
All this chaos could comply
To some grand pattern in the sky!
CHORUS: Neutron Craze! Wow!
Neutron Craze! Wow!
Neutron Craze! Wow!
Will some day make us all go pow!
(Chorus repeat.)
CHORUS: Neutron Craze! Wow!
MENGELE (sprechgesang): A sequence of collisions.
CHORUS: Neutron Craze! Wow!
MENGELE: Equivalent emissions.
CHORUS: Neutron Craze! Wow!
MENGELE: Combustible ignitions.
Is this what God envisioned?!
(During dance break.)
This new proton jack jumps back
It's all thermodyno, mack!
A sequence of collisions
Equivalent emissions
Combustible ignitions
Given the right conditions
Molecular revisions!
VERSE 2: It's all thermodynamic
It's not a fluke, it's not a trick.
Fermi found a way to flick
Neutrons into some nuclei-ick.
What's that sound? It"s quite a lick.
The little blip that's awful quick.
It isn't tock. It isn't tick.
It's something sorta like a click.
MENGELE (sprechgesang): After several collisions
Our little neutron's slowing down
Allowing for its capture
Within another's rapture
A nuclear embrace
Causing one more proton to displace.
And when this displaced proton ricochets
In a blaze of cosmic rays,
Conserving ze momentum
Our neutron has just lent him
He's dancing the Neutron Craze!
(Big dance break.)
CHORUS: It's something sorta like a click!
Something sorta like a click!
Something sorta like a click!
Like a click!
Sorta like a click!
Sorta like a click!
SORTA LIKE A CLICK!
(Big Finale.)
POW!
(Blackout.
Lights up on Dr. Hempelmann and Dr. Herman Lisco. . . .)
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