J.O.B. THE HIP-HOPERA. I don’t know where composers and performers Eli Batalion and Jerome Sable found their inspiration for a rap and hip hop dance retelling of the Biblical story of Job, but it may be more than a coincidence that outside the theater proper, on the stage that is Hollywood Boulevard, the audience will hear a man shouting biblical prophecies through a bullhorn, and be asked to tip a group of break dancers. Inside the Stella Adler Theatre, the rap and dance work together to form an intense, clever, and verbally thrilling 90 minute entertainment.

The Book of Job may be the first presentation of really bad things happening to a good person, and why God would permit such suffering for one of his faithful. It builds on that story by having Job’s friends wonder what Job must have done to deserve his bad fortune, even though the reader knows Job to be blameless. In the original, God and Satan have a bet, whether Job would be so devout if he suffered. God wins the bet. Countless other stories have used the same theme, from the later Biblical story of Jesus’ suffering to the movie “Trading Places,” where Dan Ackroyd’s bosses bet one dollar to see if he will still be a good person after they deprive him of livelihood and home.

The Hip-Hopera also replaces God with a corporate boss, this time at a successful record company. Job is the successful head of A&R at fictional Hoover Records in Los Angeles. His boss Jonathan Hoover is persuaded by Job’s jealous rival to test Job’s loyalty to the boss, first by demoting him, then by firing him. Against this story is played the story of Cain and Abel, or MC Cain and MC Abel, who are struggling to rise from writing commercial jingles to rap superstardom, with Abel willing to compromise for commercial success and Cain more hard core. The ending of the Job story seems a little rough; it’s one thing to reconcile with God, it’s another to reconcile with another person, even your boss, who subjects you to suffering just to see what you’re made of. And the “new” ending of the Cain and Abel story is plain baffling.

The tone of the play is clever; there’s a morality tale, yet lines that flow and slick wordplay are what’s on these young composers’ minds. Sable and Batalion as the MC’s knock themselves out, playing all the characters, with different accents, men and women, young and old. Sable is heavily schvitzing fifteen minutes into the show, when Job has not yet appeared. They’re perfectionists.

The other performers have a strictly limited role. There are dancers to give the MC’s a chance to catch their breath and an occasional gospel singer. The show, which the 20-something duo has been developing for a few years, could be further enhanced by democratizing the performing duties among all the players.

Hip Hopera is theater for the videogame generation. Sable and Bataglia are themselves bright and restless and provide constantly shifting voices and musical styles from rap to jazz and Broadway (even a mock uplifting ballad, “You Can Do Like, Whatever”). Their Ivy League educations are reflected in the thorough musical references to all the current hip hop styles and in a vocabulary, which, besides including all the necessary swearing and insults, embraces a range far beyond what you’ll find on Jay-Z’s records. Like modern videogames, the brain activity required of the audience to keep up with all that is packed into this short production is considerable, and the crowd loved the crazy race.