Humour of biblical proportions

The stage at the Centaur Theatre is dark. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a spotlight shines onto two Jewish guys decked out in Adidas tracksuits and doo-rags. The shorter one, Jerome Saibil, a.k.a. MC Cain, proposes in a faux British accent, "Why don't we start with some calisthenics?"

He motions for the audience to get up and, suddenly, people are lunging, touching their toes and tricep-stretching like it was going out of style. Phantom of the Opera this was not.

Saibil and Eli Batallion comprise Foqué dans la Tête Productions. The two NDG-raised friends began their company as a seventh-grade English project. The two went to Brown University together, and continued writing comedies and plays.

Job II: The Demon of the Eternal Recurrence is the follow-up to the highly successful Job: The Hip-Hop Musical, a hip-hop version of the biblical story of the same name. Highly acclaimed by critics, nuns and hip-hop heads alike, Job has been a hit on the Fringe Festival circuit for the past two years.

Job II picks up where the first part left off. This time, Nietzsche's question of "What do we do after God is dead?" (J. Hoover's arrest) serves as the underlying theme.

Thankfully, for your author who had missed Job: The Hip-Hop Musical, Saibil and Batallion recapped the details of the prequel at the outset of the play.

MC Abel awakens from his long coma to Ellie Hoover, J. Hoover's niece, telling him that the latter had been arrested for fraud. Suddenly, MC Abel is kidnapped from his room by a man posing as a nurse or, rather, Saibil with a towel on his head. The disguised nurse, Fred, brings Abel to a hut and trains him to be an über rapper-teaching him to rap in 5/4 and 7/4 time and making sure that his lyrics are void of stale gangsta-rap rhymes. What ensues is a verbal onslaught reminiscent of MC Paul Barman's nerd-as-rapper lyrics, rhyming things like "Where my jewels at?" with "wear the fool's hat" and "so-called facts" with "yoga mats."

Beneath its funny facade, however, the play does touch on deeper 'isms' and pokes fun at the media's dismissal of all hip hop as violent and gang-related.

Saibil and Batallion's versatility is a sight to behold-they wrote, produced, choreographed and acted out all 10 characters of the Job saga. Only flashlights, a towel and a bottle of red water accentuated their doo-rag and track suit ensembles. A far cry from elaborate costumes or falling chandeliers, it was Saibil and Batallion's intelligence, wit and humour that stole the show.

— Heather Kitty Mak