Baba Brinkman - The Rap Guide to Religion

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Dirk Murray 'Baba' Brinkman, late of Vancouver, performs barefoot. Audiences may find themselves wondering if this is some kind of religious symbolism, or the punchline to a joke that never quite arrives. Perhaps they're simply seeking meaning where there is none to be found. That in itself is a neat little commentary on the unique mixture of rhythm and theological argument that Brinkman brings to the Fringe.

Through self-penned hip-hop and spoken word interludes, Brinkman takes us through a hyper-condensed account of religious belief, primarily via the lens of evolutionary psychology. Crucially, he can rap. He won't redefine the artform or anything, but his flow is decent and his rhymes defiantly imaginative (Brinkman is ballsy enough not only to rhyme "providence" with "obvious", but also to call himself out for doing so). Still, his vocal skills are more consistent than his comedy, which rarely fails in execution, but is often so restrained one could almost fail to notice it.

Songwriter-in-residence at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (and you can see why), Brinkman undoubtedly has the intellectual curiosity his subject demands. Unfortunately, the show encounters a problem familiar to the many ambitious Fringe productions that try to compress whole fields of ideas into a breezy hour of entertainment: many of its threads feel unfinished and unexplored. Meanwhile, it often seems that Brinkman is holding his own passionate atheism in check out of politeness. He would do well to remember: good rappers are rarely so polite.