Markus The Sadist @ The Drum

30th Oct 2009

THE term ‘rap opera’ should nor­mally instil a feel­ing of fear. Any­one who’s ever stum­bled across R Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet on Youtube can account for this (espe­cially the bit with the midget in the cupboard).

So it was with trep­i­da­tion that I sat down at The Drum to watch Jonzi D’s Markus the Sadist as it comes to the close of it’s tour around the coun­try. Look­ing back, my ini­tial wari­ness leaves me feel­ing like a bigot, because it was an immensely enter­tain­ing show. The ‘rap opera’ only demon­strated the impact that rhythm and metre can have on a play’s lan­guage, which at times gave it a bizarre, if pleas­ant, Shake­spearean quality.

Markus the Sadist presents us with the tit­u­lar pro­tag­o­nist, bril­liantly played by hip-hop artist and actor Bashy; ini­tially an upcom­ing grime MC, pro­pelled into super­star­dom and forced to become the face of gang­ster rap in order to appease his man­ager and the heinous eco­nomic forces behind the music indus­try. Bashy man­ages to act superbly both a shy boy slowly dis­cov­er­ing his poten­tial, and a swag­ger­ing, arro­gant super­star — com­plete with real­is­tic Amer­i­can accent. He deserves full credit for being able to sup­port the strange idea of a ‘rap opera’ and man­aged to carry the entire play from start to fin­ish. That said, both Rob Brod­er­ick (Irish comedian/ rap­per) and Colleen Joseph (femme fatale with knock­out dance moves) both added waves to the over­all show, although each actor and actress involved deserves full credit for a con­fi­dent and con­vinc­ing performance.

On top of this, the play utilised light­ing and visual props with a large degree of suc­cess, cul­mi­nat­ing in my per­sonal high­light: the shoot­ing of an espe­cially clichéd music video.

Over­all, despite the play wear­ing a bit thin towards the end, and the plot unex­pect­edly going all Orwellian, the end result was hugely enter­tain­ing, clev­erly put together and extremely engag­ing. I really hope this play goes on tour again as it car­ries waves of charisma and orig­i­nal­ity that so many other musi­cal pro­duc­tions lack.