Plenty of rhymes and reasons to catch hip-hop 'Job'

JOB: The Hip-Hop Musical

Vocabulary may not be one of the usual high points of hip-hop. But Jerome Saibil and Eli Batalion, creators of Job: The Hip-Hop Musical, know how to show off their lexicon. Where else can you hear hip-hoppers spin words like dramatis personae and drop the names of philosophers like Hegel and Kant?

In Job, Montrealers Saibil and Batalion play MC Cain and MC Abel, two hip-hoppers who tell the biblical story of Job by transplanting him to the modern-day music industry, where he turns into Job Lowe (read Joe Blow) and falls prey to the machinations of nefarious fellow execs. Job loses his pension, his stock, his vacation, his dental plan and eventually his job. "We're hitting you hard upside the head with hardship," one of the characters explains.

The two actors, both graduates of Brown University, do all this up in fine style. Dressed in coordinating track suits and stocking caps (the costumes are by Old Navy), they switch characters back and forth with ease; their choreography is elaborate and frenetic and their energy boundless. Where else can you hear hip-hoppers rhyme about academic tenure or sample the tune of Eine kleine Nachtmusik? Saibil and Batalion's professors at Brown must be patting themselves on the backs.

— Elizabeth Maupin