Rapped in urban angst, Job rocks

After the 30-strong crowd was warmed up with tunes by The Roots, Jurassic 5, A Tribe Called Quest and Blackalicious (which might seem like serving foie gras before Cheetos), the two cast members of JOB: The Hip-Hop Musical jumped onstage and proved they could maintain the level of quality their warm-up music indicated.

While JOB is a musical, it's very much an homage to hip-hop, employing many of the genres qualities in Jerome Saibil and Eli Batalion's urban interpretation of the biblical story.

Now, this could have been a train wreck along the lines of, say, Saving Private Ryan: The Ballet. However, with this duo's dexterity on the mic, the presentation was rapid, novel, witty and, most important, comprehensible.

The premise: Job, one of God's most loyal servants, has his faith tested when he loses all he has. This story--set in the land of Uz in the Bible--is recast in modern New York at a record label. God, J. Hoover, is the head of the label. Lou Saphire (the devil) is vice-president of finance and Job Lowe (say the names aloud) is an executive.

Batalion and Saibil play all these roles, as well as six others. They do it so skillfully, you always know who's who.

The show is set up like a hip-hop disc of 10 tracks complete with skits and intermissions.

It's a show that will likely appeal more to hip-hop fans than aficionados of stage musicals, because, like hip-hop, it's very self-referential.

Some of the musical's funniest moments come from popular rap phrases casually tossed into other rhymes--e.g. "I like the way you do it right thurrr," "Give me the keys to your Bimma," "This looks like a job for me," "Insane in the membrane." If you caught these references to songs by Chingy, Beenie Man, Eminem and Cypress Hill, you should check Job out -- if nothing more than to see the duo's valley-girl spoof of Eve's Let Me Blow Your Mind.

Now, that's funny.

- Nick Lewis