“I usually try to connect with the whole room and if it’s an improv show I like to maintain eye contact,” he says. “I often ask for a bit of light in the room so I can see the back row, but with the size of this room I don’t have a feckin’ clue. I’ll see six rows and hope the rest of them have a good time.”
Broderick, a rapper and comedian, formed Abandoman with musician and vocalist Sam Wilson. Together the comedy hip hop improv masters have freestyled their way into the hearts of festival goers around the world. The combination of music and comedy for them was a no-brainer, meaning that they could play at both arts and music festivals. “We’re very greedy lads,” quips Broderick.
The duo have had a good warm-up to tomorrow’s show given that they’ve toured with Ed Sheeran as his support act. Broderick, who was mates with Sheeran before he hit the big time, remembers the day they met. “Ed somehow ended up sitting on the stage in a green hoodie, with his very ginger hair looking like a little hip hop leprechaun, which is how I referred to him,” he says. “We ended up doing a show together at Brighton Fringe Festival and then at some point when we were hanging out he was like, ‘Who’s your lawyer?’ I said, ‘Ed, it’s grand, we’re doing a free venue in Brighton to 20 people a day. I don’t think either of us need to worry about our lawyers at the moment.’ Then a year later he was the biggest thing in music. I was like, ‘In fairness, I underestimated how well things were going for you.’”
Things have been going well for Abandoman. They’re winners of the UK Sunday Times Best Musical Act of the Fringe 2014, make regular appearances on TV and radio across the UK and debuting at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival this year with their show Life + Rhymes, a fully improvised imaginary retrospective. “It’s really silly,” Broderick notes. “It’s basically a fictional biography of Sam and myself set in the mid ’90s.” The show comes complete with doctored photos purporting to tell the story of hip hop’s rise in Europe, and represents Broderick and Wilson as Ireland’s only proponents of hip hop. It also pits Biggie and Tupac against Daft Punk as rivals.
“Everyone in the crowd becomes someone we’ve toured with: managers, friends, cousins,” says Broderick. “The idea is they’ve all flown in from all over the world for this reunion and they’ll remind us of key features. All of the things they give us become 100 percent of the songs.”
By Joanne Brookfield
Venue: The Famous Spiegeltent
Dates: Thursday March 30 – Sunday April 23 (bar Mondays)
Duration: 60 minutes
Tickets: $27 – $35
