BASH’D! A GAY RAP OPERA
Featuring and written by Chris Craddock, Nathan Cuckow. Directed by Ron
Jenkins. Part of Next Stage Theatre Festival. Jan 4,
5:30 pm; Jan 5, 7:30pm; Jan 6, 3:45pm; ?Jan 7, 9:15pm; ? Jan 9, 7pm;
Jan 10, 9pm; Jan 12, 9pm; Jan 13, 5pm. $15; $12 mats; 4 play pass $48;
8 play pass $88. Factory Theatre Mainspace, 125 Bathurst.
Musical/Mature Audience/Warning: Language, Fog Machine, Boys kissing boys
Running time: 60 Minutes
Self-actualization through self-expression; sartorial flamboyance; vitriolic infighting; style trends wantonly co-opted by boring, middle-class white people… with so much in common, hip-hop and gay culture ought to get along like tight bros from way back when. But Eminem/Elton John GLAAD-handing aside, the two preeminent pop-cultural phenomena of the past 30 years have always had a strained relationship.
But BASH’d! — the viciously-funny, enthusiastically-performed hip-hopera bastard child of Chris Craddock and Nathan Cuckow — offers hope that these two solitudes of outsider culture can kiss and make-up, with tongue. Imagine the Beastie Boys if they’d grown up in West Greenwich instead of Brooklyn, or Public Enemy gone absolutely ghetto-faboo.
Backed by Aaron Macri’s awesome pastiche of beats jacked from classic clubland staples, Craddock and Cuckow swap sharp, rapid-fire verses as T-Bag and Feminem, a pair of rhymeslinging angels on a mission from God. Theirs is a little ditty ’bout Jack and Dylan; two Canadian queers growin’ up in a fag-hatin’ land. Well, sort of — while Dylan is chased from his small-town home by his small-minded dad, Jack grows up in queer-positive downtown in a same-sex household. Eyes meeting across a crowded dancefloor, our star-cross’d lovers hook up, get gay-married and look set to live happily ever after. That is, until Jack is bashed by a gang and Dylan opts to mete out some heterophobic vigilante justice, with typically tragic results. This is an opera, after all.
Breathlessly-executed and brilliantly written (best lyric: “I’ve got a dick thicker than a pint of Guinness”) with few limp rhymes and a strong, disarmingly sweet narrative, BASH’d is a total blast. Homo hip-hop? Believe the hype.