The Rap Guide to Evolution

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Baba Brinkman’s “audacious” one-man show on Darwin’s theories pulls a neat trick, said Frank Scheck in the New York Post. While people don’t usually go to the theater wanting to hear “detailed descriptions of such subjects as multicellularity, endosymbiosis, and mitochondria,” the geeky Canadian “lit hop” rapper makes all of this not only palatable but goofily entertaining. That explains how his show, which debuted at 2009’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, became a cult hit as it toured Britain and the U.S. To be sure, Brinkman’s 90-minute screed will probably not appeal to die-hard creationists (he has faced a few audience walkouts while touring). But for almost everyone else, it’s “as fun as it is informative.”

Key to Brinkman’s success is that he avoids acting like a show-off, said David Rooney in The New York Times. If this were just a “smarty-pants vehicle” for his rhyming skills and science knowledge, it would be unbearable. But Brinkman, a former medieval studies student who previously put a hip-hop spin on Chaucer, “brings genuine passion, curiosity, and analytical skills” to his subjects. True, some of his more dubious rhymes, such as wittily pairing “humanity” with “huge manatee,” won’t keep Stephen Sondheim up at night. On the other hand, he’s plain interesting when drawing parallels between animal behavior and rap as Darwinian expressions of power, pride, and sexual magnetism.

The reach of Brinkman’s theorizing is a “testament to his ambition,” said Jason Fitzgerald in Backstage. He’s actually less interested in rehashing Darwin’s teachings than in using evolutionary psychology to explore why the human tribe has so much trouble getting along. His efforts ultimately feel too scattershot, though the video wall behind him—“dynamic and imaginative enough to be a work of art unto itself”—helps connect some of the dots. Then again, Brinkman is constantly rewriting or improvising changes to the script. There’s no telling how it might evolve.