[2013129] Abandoman – The Life and Rhymes of Abandoman
Rob Broderick @ The Garden of Unearthly Delights – The Cupola
9:30pm, Mon 11 Mar 2013
Abandoman got some massive buzz during the 2012 Fringe, but by the time my sozzled brain had heard the plaudits it was nigh-on impossible to fit his show into The Schedule. This year, however, I stayed a little less sozzled, a little more flexible, and – after witnessing the man’s work for the first time during Sketch The Rhyme – I finally bought a ticket.
And so did a squillion other people, because the line leading into The Cupola stretched way back. By the time I got inside, there’s only a few seats still free; with a deep breath, I sat in the front row, my ears ringing with tales from friends who were dragged up to be part of the act… and I was not in a performing mood. But when Rob Broderick – a.k.a. Abandoman – jumps onstage, whips up some fervent applause from an obviously Abandoman-literate crowd, and starts rolling through some patter about Lego drugs and nightclubs, I began to think that the crowd-interaction stories no longer applied.
But then, to demonstrate his unique melding of hip-hop and improvised comedy, Broderick starts plying the audience for random material. He asks everyone to dig up a random, obscure object from their pockets or bags, and then created a flourishing rap linking all the objects together; whilst I was disappointed that he didn’t take my binoculars as a “weird object”, he did later roll my suggestion of heli-bungee-jumping for a Buck’s Night into account for another lyrical tirade, so that was nice.
And, after rounding the show out with a (gloriously) silly bit of rapping with Auto-Tune, I was left to reflect on how right everyone had been about Abandoman. Not only is he funny and absurdly quick-witted, but his on-the-fly MCing and rapping is astonishing; the manner in which he can create not only rhymes, but funny rhymes, from out of thin air is simple beyond compare.
(129) Abandoman: everything you've heard is true. His ability to conjure rhymes out of nothing is amazing. #ff2013 #ADLfringe
— Pete Muller (@festivalfreakAU) March 11, 2013