JOB II: The Demon of Eternal Recurrence is the kind of play this [Wildside] festival was made for. Performed, written, and directed by the Montreal-born duo Jerome Saibil and Eli Batalion, Job II is a hip hop musical with fat beats, sick rhymes and Nietzschean philosophy. The Montreal duo’s work definitely fits the festival’s claim of showcasing “exciting, cutting-edge” theatre.

The sequel to Job: the Hip-Hop Musical, Job II begins where the first play left off, with MC Cain shooting MC Abel. Waking up in a hospital bed, MC Abel finds that big time hip hop producer J. Hoover (read Jehovah) has been arrested for fraud.

With the prime-mover of the original play absent from the scene, MC Cain and MC Abel have to decide how to act in an producer-less (read godless) world.

When MC Abel is kidnapped from his hospital bed by a man named Fred with an ambiguous accent, the play takes a Nietzschean turn. While Fred trains MC Abel to embrace the absence of Jehovah and become a kind of uber-rapper (who can rap in odd time signatures on non-violent subjects), MC Abel takes advantage of the absence of authority and becomes violent.

If complex German philosophy doesn’t sound like a likely foundation for a fun musical, don’t worry, the play never gets bogged down in ponderous Matrix-esque speeches.

Fast-paced and hilarious, Job II is fueled by split-second character changes, great physical acting and the most intellectual of rhymes (they rhyme “Schopenhauer” with “grope in shower”).

On the way toward its existential conclusion, the play satirizes everyone from the corrupt and inept police, to gangsta rappers themselves (the news calls the shooting a “Hip hop apocalypse/ Two shots, the cops eclipsed/ Two cops, they shut their lips/ Tupac, is referenced.”)

Perhaps the best satire comes at the expense of the media. Batalion and Saibil get the smug look and smarmy tone of television news anchors bang on. Covering the shooting of MC Abel, the anchors implore their viewers to: “stay tuned for more/the news tonight: hip hop gang war.”

The play takes place on a near-empty stage. Through clever lighting, great physical acting, and inventive direction and choreography Saibil and Batalion are able to create scenes that are not only audibly appealing, as they rap in 7/4 about nihilism, but visually striking as well. Hilarious and obscenely clever, Job II should not be missed. Word.

— Nicholas Hune-Brown