Hip Hop Shakespeare Live Music Videos packs loads of fun into its 45 minute running time. It is virtuosic, danceable, provocative, and to those that know either their Shakespeare or their hip-hop, awe-inspiring.

Melanie Karin and David Benedict Brown, who married five days before their Fringe debut, take some of the best and biggest songs of 90s and 00s hip-hop, but change the lyrics to reflect the plots of Shakespeare plays. They maintain the complex flows and rhyme schemes of the original songs, dancing with energy and wit all the while. Clever references to Taylor Swift and LL Cool J videos are blended with an audacious and irreverent script that frequently causes the listener to make new connections between the violent worlds of gangsta rap and Shakespeare tragedies. The individual reinterpretations are often brilliant, as well: Othello is redone as “99 Problems” (“You crazy for this one Shakes! It’s your moor!”) with Iago playing the clueless cop. Ms. Jackson is retold as a tale of two households in Verona, with both Karin and Brown belting out “I’m Sorry Ms. Capulet!” And their choice of song for Hamlet is so genius, I don’t want to spoil it in this review – but rest assured I will be raving about it to anyone willing to listen for at least the next few months.

Oh yeah, and these kids can rap, too: Karin flows ferocious while successfully impersonating a group of very different rappers, and Brown’s solo turn on 2Pac’s “Hit ‘Em Up” (Richard III) just about knocks the crowd dead. They received a well-deserved standing O at the performance I watched, and after the show Sad Mag caught up with the couple to chat over some drinks.

SM: So how did you get the idea for Hip-Hop Shakespeare?

Melanie: I’m a huge Shakespeare fan and a huge hip-hop fan, obviously. And then a few years ago, I was auditioning for the national theatre school acting program, and I got a callback. At the callback, they make you do a play in three minutes, but when I was thinking about what play I wanted to do, Macbeth is my favorite play. But I was doing a lot of hip hop karaoke at the time and I really loved that and I was just like “I just wanna rap!” That’s how I feel most comfortable performing. And then I started thinking about making a rap parody out of Macbeth. I wanted to do a rap song where there was a little bit of back and forth. When I did Macbeth in school, my teacher said, “It’s so much sexier than people think it is,” and when I think of the sexiest hip-hop song, it’s “Doin’ It” by LL Cool J and Leshaun, because when that song came out, that was the song that you didn’t want your parents to know you were listening to. Because you’re like, “What if they think I’m masturbating right now?” Then I showed it to Dave…

Dave: I was almost in tears with pride, even though we had just started dating I was absolutely beside myself. That’s what then inspired me, because I wanted to be with Mel. I wanted to show her I could do it too. Even though she hadn’t seen Richard III the first time I did it, I essentially wrote it for her, which I guess I’ve never even told you.

SM: What do you see as the similarities between hip hop and Shakespeare?

M: People don’t realize how controversial Shakepseare was in his day, that people saw him as sort of uncouth and base. Even though he had the queen’s endorsement there were a lot of plebes that would go and see Shakespeare. There is so much violence and misogyny and a lot of the things people hate about hip-hop is actually all in Shakespeare.

D: There was a reviewer in Ottawa who said that the violence in the gangsta rap world correlates very well to the violence in the Shakespearean world.

M: I think the easiest comparison is that it’s rhythmic language. Nobody ever spoke in Shakespearean verse, ever. It is a rhythmic poetic language, so in that sense hip-hop is very similar. and hip-hop is also all about storytelling and personas and egos…

SM: And monologues.

D: And it’s a real window into the human condition.

SM: Are you concerned at all about audiences understanding the references?

D: Well, it was a concern for me from the get-go, but I think even just giving people glimpses is good. It’s the same with Shakespeare: I think there are very few people who go see a Shakespeare play, who and know and understand everything that’s going on, because it’s an advanced rhythmical language, just like hip-hop. You have to listen to it many times before it ever sets in, unless you’re Melanie, who can memorize it after listening to it once.

M: But the cool thing is, it means that people come to our shows more than once, which is great!

D: We planned that…

M: It’s like a hip-hop song, you hear it once and you’re like, ” That was amazing! I have to listen to that again so I can get it.”

SM: What kind of responses have you received from the audience?

M: The best was this older lady and her husband who saw our show the first time asked, “How did you come up with those lines? For Othello, you said ’99 problems and a bitch ain’t one.'” She didn’t get that we were parodying real hip-hop songs, which I thought was adorable. And I said “Oh, that’s actually a Jay-Z song, you should listen to him”, and she was like, “Maybe I’ll start.”

I think some people are so put off by hip-hop and are think, “I won’t like that!” and so they never expose themselves to it. And then when they actually hear it and see the energy and excitement behind it they’re like, “That’s actually kinda cool!”

Get showtimes and details at the Vancouver Fringe Festival website!