Yo, yo,yo what up, Job?
Fringe hip-hop musical puts a rap twist on Old Testament tale

Victoria film director Atom Egoyan is among those raving about a rap-music version of the Book of Job en route to this city.

JOB: The Hip-Hop Musical -- opening next Wednesday at the Victoria Fringe Theatre Festival -- has emerged as the outrageous left-field hit of Canada's fringe circuit. Two 23-year-old Montrealers transform the Old Testament trials of boil-ridden Job into an irreverent beat-box romp that's attracted critical raves, two-hour lineups and negotiations with Off-Broadway producers.

Egoyan, an acclaimed film director, is quoted in a press squib for Job: The Hip-Hop Musical as saying: "Hugely imaginative ... Highly entertaining!"

It's no joke, insists co-creator Jerome Saibil, who raps in the show with childhood pal Eli Batalion. He said Egoyan made the remarks after witnessing a February performance at Toronto's Tarragon Theatre. Surprisingly, the director accepted the invitation from the two unknowns, checking out Job: The Hip-Hop Musical with his rap-loving son Arshile in tow.

The director was interested by the fact that Saibil and Batalion -- in hip-hop tag-team style -- each play a variety of characters, including Job, Cain and Abel. In their version of the Biblical tale, the brothers become MC Cain and MC Abel, while Job is a record executive called Job Lowe.

"He thought it was a really cool concept," said Saibil, interviewed before a performance at the Edmonton Fringe Festival. "He said, 'Who are you guys?' "

JOB: The Hip-Hop Musical is one of 33 shows playing the Victoria Fringe Theatre Festival, which commences Thursday and continues at four different Victoria venues through Sept. 1. Now in its 17th year, this celebration of theatre both wacky and serious last year drew 30,000 people to ticketed and free performances.

The Victoria festival is part of a Canada-wide summertime fringe theatre circuit encompassing such cities as Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Toronto. Edmonton is the grand-daddy of North American fringe festivals, drawing crowds of more than half a million each summer, said its founder Brian Paisley, now living in Victoria.

"It took off like a rocket," said Paisley, who in 1982 loosely based his model of a first-come, first-served theatre festival on the famous Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Last year Saibil graduated with honours from Brown University in Rhode Island with a philosophy degree. He said the blend of Bible and hip-hop in Job: The Hip-Hop Musical appealed because it seemed so unlikely. Saibil and Batalion slip a little Beatles and Mozart into their anti-corporate parable, meanwhile doling out rapid-fire rhyming couplets that meld pop-culture references with allusions to J.D. Salinger, William Faulkner and William Golding. Instead of being smitten with boils and having his children perish, their modern-day Job is threatened with losing his job benefits and company car.

Some audiences happily make the leap with the track-suit wearing hip-hoppers; others question their interpretation, admits Saibil.

"One or two say it's actually not an apt analogy because getting boils is a lot worse than losing your car," he said.

Both young men are admirers of such hip-hop artists as The Roots, Blackalicious and A Tribe Called Quest. However, Saibil and Batalion, disappointed with the genre's lyrical focus on guns, women and self-congratulation, formed their own satirical hip-hop duo, The Grafenberg All-Stars. This evolved into Job: The Hip-Hop Musical, which opened last year at the Montreal Fringe Festival.

The pair are now negotiating with lawyers for a 2004 run at a 300-seat Off-Broadway theatre.

They wrote the show in six almost sleepless days. Initially worried about its quality, Saibil and Batalion almost cancelled the premiere performance -- relenting only after an alternative Montreal magazine offered them a cover story.

The Toronto Star subsequently named the pair's show one of the "Top 10 Plays of 2002."

"We thought the show would bomb," said Saibil. "We were scared no one would like it at all."

— Adrian Chamberlain