There ain't nothing too good for hip-hop. And Canterbury Tales Remixed, (CTR) playing at the SoHo Playhouse at 15 Vandam Street, is proof.

A brainchild of Baba Brinkman the 85-minute performance rescues the works of "dead white European males" from the limbo post modernism has long confined them in.

CTR is a savvy mix of high and low culture: it satisfies the tourist who comes to the theater for entertainment and the purist who demands respect for the text.

Brinkman embraces Marshall McLuhan's conceit that "the medium is the message." He has high esteem for the spoken and the written word.

Even though hip-hop is barely 40-years-old, its roots go back thousands of years to the bard, griot and wandering troubadour. Hip-hop, like the written word, uses metaphor, allegory, and other literary, dramatic and poetic devices.

CTM's stage is a bare bones hip-hop setting: Brinkman acts as the MC and his collaborator, award winner Jaime Simmonds, as DJ.

The stage has nothing to hide; CTR embodies Bertoldt Brecht's epic theater in the way the DJ reimages hip hop music on two turntables through beatboxing, as well as the flashing of images on a screen so that the audience is caught in the weave of storytelling.

Brinkman begins by breathing life into the clay tablets on which "Gilgamesh" was inscribed 5000 years ago. He unleashes his creative power by interlacing the dignified language of the epic with the street language of the "hood," without dropping a stitch of the narration.

The mask of Gilgemesh is superimposed on the pumped iron physique of a young Arnold Schwazennegger and that of Enkudu  by Johnny Weissmueller's. They add spice to a recital of events of lust, rape, rapine and lusty swordsmanship by throwing into the mix references to Mendelian genetics and Darwin's "Origin of Species."

The heart of the program is Chaucer's "Pardoner's Tale," as well as "The Merchant Tale" and "The Wife of Bath Tale."

Brinkman takes arch delight in his telling of "The Pardoner's Tale," in Middle English, Modern English and hip-hop. To him, the Pardoner, peddler of indulgences and forgiveness of sins, is a cross of "gangsta," pampered pimp and televangelist with one goal in mind: self-aggrandizement and amassing a personal fortune.

Informed by the music of Boyz in the Hood, this cleric finds contemporary identity in Ted Haggard, Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart. The moral of the story is greed doesn't pay: however, Brinkman does not ask the question of whether or not so venal a pardoner can bring salvation to his flock.

"The Merchant Tale" refers to a May-to-December marriage of an older man and a nubile lass, preferably a virgin. No one can miss the allusion to Hugh Hefner as his Playmates in his "palatial" California surroundings surround his cartoon-ish figure.  

We are in the world of the rich and famous and the glitteratti, where money buys trophy wives. Kanye West's music speaks to this world.

The right and wrong of this mismatch of ages sharpens a battle of the sexes; for the man, fearing being cuckold, seeks to hold his young wife on a tight leash, whereas her appetite may seek a more vigorous male, closer to her age, to escape her imprisonment.

The Wife of Bath is five times a widow, on her pilgrimage to Canterbury, looking for yet another mate. Her tale, as Brinkman tells it, is a strike for a play on the saying "what man proposes, the woman disposes," as a formula for a long happy and felicitous marriage. Brinkman finds little help in the songs of Eminem, Jay-Z, Kanye West, 50 Cent and the like to make his point. So he calls on Nicki Minaj and Dr. Ruth.

Finally, "Beowulf" offers Brinkman a chance to blow the dust off a Scandinavian "Edda" by appealing to the North Irish poet Shamus Hennessey's inspired translation that he contrasts to what he calls Hollywood's "finger puppet" cartoon version of Angelina Jolie.

As a crescendo to his act, he stops; he loops back to the word, the written word and the legacy of reading that literature bequeaths us. For reading is not only the cultivation of our private space, but turns the word into rational order and existence, to which hip-hop is a willing servant.

Brinkman, bare headed, in his hoodie and jeans and Simmonds in his baseball hat turned to the right, wearing a black jacket, black t-shirt and Levi's, were greeted to enthusiastic applause and a standing ovation.

The audience, composed  mainly of middle class, very educated white men and women ranging in age from their 20s to their 80s, had no trouble in understanding hip-hop argot and hand gestures, though they might not be able to recognize beatboxing from the art of DJ'ing or MC'ing from a hole in the head.

It just goes to show you that the generation and the class divide may not be as wide as one may think.

CTR will probably be extended into February. For students the price of entry is accessible: $20; for adults, it is $55.