Rap Guide To Evolution, The

Gilded Balloon Teviot    5 - 31 August @ 14.45    Baba Brinkman

Previously known for “The Rap Canterbury Tales“, Canadian performer Baba Brinkman has applied a similar condensed formula to his latest production at this year’s Edinburgh Festival. The subject is evolution (well Darwinism mostly, neatly placed into the bicentenary celebrations of his birth). This is an energetic one-man hour long show set on a bare stage, save for a video screen, chair and microphone. I wondered, at the opening, how I might manage to endure the whole performance if Darwin’s theories were going to be related rap style. Fortunately, my concerns were allayed because Brinkman deftly intersperses spoken potted lecture with rap as he whizzes across evolutionary time zones, from the origins of life right up to present day... and beyond. 

Split into ten chapters, the performance ponders fleetingly on such vast subjects as God, infinity, creationism versus Darwinism, and even gender roles. The pace flags a little when he takes on the character of a stoned hippy, and I’m not sure how easily Darwin sits with hip-hop, but I do know that Brinkman is an engaging and mesmerizing performer who loves his subject, and performs with both humour and passion.