| Times Colonist
Victoria, British Columbia August 30, 2003 Bye Job! That's a rap
Yo, yo, yo! So Job, he a big-time exec at a hip-hop record outfit and da bling-bling is just a-rollin' in. This dude be well and truly flossin' ice, y'all -- I'm talkin' fo' sheezy. But then the fat cats runnin' the numbers game do a dirty on poor ol' Job. Job: The Hip-Hop Musical is a rap version of the old Testament tale of Job. Two imaginative Montrealers -- Jerome Saibil (MC Cain) and Eli Batalion (MC Abel) -- tell the story of how Job Lowe, an employee of Hoover Records, undergoes a loyalty test. However, Job isn't plagued by painful boils, instead, he loses his company perks and is ultimately tricked out of a job. Saibil and Batalion, sporting red and black Adidas outfits, rap in rhyming couplets to a beat-heavy hip-hop soundtrack. It's a tad unintelligible at first. The words come fast and furiously as the pair tag-team back and forth, sometimes switching characters, sometimes even (briefly) sharing the same one. Sample chatter from the show: "We done it before, we go'n' do it again/So throw you hands high like you's insane/It's the story of Job, allegory of pain." Much of the show's appeal revolves around the fact it's being done at all. Saibil and Batalion are energetic and cocky enough, yet it seems the show could be further workshopped to reach its full theatrical potential. It's a touch dense and sometimes hard to make out. That said, this is one of the most inventive productions I've seen covering the Victoria Fringe Festival for more than a decade. These university-educated wise-asses are almost too smart for their own good -- the soundtrack makes cheeky references to Bizet and Beethoven, the lyrics mix street slang with tips of the doo-rag to Ulysses and The Great Gatsby. Oddly engrossing overall, although over-40 viewers might find themselves yearning for Frank Sinatra and a martini afterwards.
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