"Good actors are brave enough to handle anything. 5 of the actors with zero rap experience all learned one of the songs that I wrote and they performed it live on Saturday for our reading of the play. They killed it and actually got applause from the crowd, I was truly proud of them."
— Kyprios, Ash Rizin co-writer on the Work in Progress session in February 2011
“This story of youthful dreams and dangers is going on right now, in neighbourhoods all around us – and it’s told with the high-energy music of our time. Truly theatre about ‘what’s now, what’s new, and what’s next’.”
— Vanessa Porteous, Artistic Director
Musical Theatre Gets a Good Rap - Fast Forward Weekly
Hip-hop gets good rap in Alberta Theatre Projects' musical Ash Rizin - Calgary Herald
Ash Rizin explores gang life through hip hop beats - Getdown.ca
Ash Rizin - The Globe and Mail
This tremendously ambitious hip-hop musical from playwright Michael P. Northey and MC Kyprios concerns Ash (Aaron Hursh), a middle-class graffiti artist with a poetic soul. “Not a loser … only lost,” is the tagline he sprays across B.C.'s Lower Mainland.
In his search for purpose, Ash ends up joining an underground hip-hop crew, but also gets mixed up with a drug-dealing gang – and soon he is torn between the two.
Produced in association with British Columbia's youth-oriented Green Thumb Theatre, this cautionary tale definitely has a theatre-for-young-adults feel to it at first – but, in the second act, it takes a turn into dark territory that brings it closer in tone to The Wire. The ending is a real shock.
Canadian rap musicals about Chaucer or the Bible have previously garnered attention, but finally here's one where, following Stephen Sondheim's dictum, content dictates form. With its six-character cast, Ash Rizin' interrogates the positive and negatives of hip-hop and the culture it sprouts from. The only major problem is that the most interesting character turns out to be a wannabe gangsta named Gat; Kyle Jespersen does a such full-blooded job portraying his mix of arrogance and insecurity, it feels like he should be the star of the show.
Top marks for flow go to Luc Roderique as socially conscious rapper Dee Skillz, but the entire cast of non-MCs acquit themselves well with the material. Oh, and Mike Wasko – as the non-rapping villain – has a brilliant speed-metal number to switch things up later on.
Hip hop musical keeps it unreal - Calgary Herald
Hip-hop musical rizes to challenge - Calgary Sun