Upright, outta sight. Job's the man, but Devil's gotta plan

Job: The Hip-Hop Musical plays from today until Nov. 1 at The New Dance Theatre (1425 9th Ave S.E.) at 8 p.m. nightly. Tickets are $14 for students and $18 for adults. For tickets and information, call 283-7725. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"We takin' you for a spin, of din, explore new ground like Tintin If it didn't finish clickin', we spittin' sound so listen Cain. Abel. Batalion & Saibil We'se able to retell the fable straight from the kitchen table HA! It's ready to serve, it's ready to serve Look out, we changin' beats like Epicurean swerves Epileptical molecular eclectically drawn You can collectively expect it that the spectacle's on Put your spectacles on, inspect the Koran Can't find your Job? It's cause your text is all wrong."

If you've never read your Bible or don't know the story of Job, maybe let two Jewish guys from Montreal rap you about it.

Jerome Saibil and Eli Batalion, both 23, started rhyming and rapping 10 years ago. They both attended the same Hebrew school, where they learned the story of Job. Job was one of God's most faithful servants, and so was tested for his loyalty. God took away everything Job had, his family, fortune and health, but, in the end, Job stood strong.

"We've taken this biblical story of Job and updated it to modern day," says Saibil. "So it now takes place in a record label in New York, and the whole dynamic takes place between the president (J. Hoover, a.k.a. Jehovah), vice-president of finance (Lou Saphire, a.k.a. Lucifer) and an executive (Job Lowe, a.k.a. Joe Blow). But the whole thing is done through hip-hop. It's 60 minutes of non-stop rapping over fresh beats. So it's a musical, but it's a hip-hop musical, and it's a musical, but it's also a biblical tale."

The story is rapped by Saibil and Batalion, who perform as MC Cain and MC Abel. These two then rap out the story as they play nine different characters on stage at once.

Job: The Hip-Hop Musical has been getting rave reviews since it debuted at a touring fringe festival from Montreal to Winnipeg in June 2002, and has since had runs in Seattle, New York and South Carolina.

Saibil and Batalion, students of Brown University in Providence, R.I., had written works for fringe festivals in the past, such as How Was Your Vasectomy? and Everything You Wanted To Know About Yourself But Were Afraid To Ask Freud. But Job has been their biggest success, already spawning a sequel called Job II.

"It took us a while to come up with the concept," Saibil says. "But it only took about three days for rhymes and three days for beats for a 60-minute show. We looked at the biblical story and took the most important parts.

"The show is basically like a hip-hop album. There's 10 tracks, with intermissions that break them up and skits that lead into the next track. We've also been told our show is technically an opera, a hip-hopera, since we advance the plot in the songs as opposed to doing it in the straight scene."

It's hard enough trying to understand narrative advancement in opera, and Saibil says he knew theatre-goers would have difficulty retaining a plot spoken at a frenetic rapping pace.

"It was difficult, because one of the characteristics of hip-hop is fast rhyming, and one of the unfortunate realities of theatre is that it's often slow paced," he says.

"Our company has a mission to try and turn that on its head, and try to reach demographics that wouldn't normally be coming to musicals.

"The challenge is trying to make something comprehensible to people who don't listen to hip-hop, and to make hip-hop theatrical. People get to like hip-hop from multiple listens, you get into the beat first, and then about the third or fourth listen, you start absorbing and understanding the lyrics.

"But here, people need to get it on the first listen.

"So what we've done is, most of the important narrative sequences are slowed down. They come at you fast when you're watching it, but if you were to actually compare the tempo to a Busta Rhymes track, it's a lot slower."

- Nick Lewis