Abandonman: Moonrock Boombox, Brighton Dome Studio Theatre

The front rows of an Abandonman gig are not a place for shy people. The core of rapping Irish comedian Rob Broderick’s act has long been to interact with the audience and turn the nuggets he gleans into ridiculous songs. For his latest show, Moonrock Boombox, which he now brings to the Brighton Comedy Festival, he turns the crowd participation into a surreal space adventure.

It’s fortunate, then, since we’re sitting in row three, that my girlfriend is not especially shy for she became a key player in Abandonman’s mission across the cosmos.

Broderick is accompanied by guitarist James Hancock and a chap on keyboards with a lovely voice and a shock of red hair (who bursts into a pitch perfect power ballad at one point). Like the Cuban Brothers, Abandonman’s career has bridged the worlds of comedy and music. You're as likely to see them squeezed between the rising toasts of the NME at a festival – indeed he supported Ed Sheeran on tour last year - as at Edinburgh.

Possibly for the only time in her life, my girlfriend was in charge of an intergalactic holo-deck

The etiquette of comedy reviewing is not to give the jokes away en masse, not to let the audience know everything that’s coming, spoiling innate tensions built by a good comedian. With Abandonman it’s hard to know what’s pure improvisation, just for tonight, and what has been carefully rehearsed and will reappear in future. It’s clear that the occasional songs have been roughed out but how much of their content is brand new is a matter for conjecture.

Broderick initially pulls “Lewis” from the audience, a bloke who works for EDF (“Are we all fans of electricity here?”). He pegs him as “a poster boy for Ben Sherman” and imagines a Breaking Bad-style scenario where Lewis and his mates are taking down other electricity “crews” such as Eon and British Gas. Lewis becomes the hero of tonight's story, and wins the crowd completely when he pulls off totally unexpected breakdance moves in a showdown with "Rosanna", another volunteer who’s a professional dancer (“Rosanna,” Broderick posits when he first pulls her from the front row, “Now that's a name which rhymes with fuck all!”).

There’s a brilliant sequence where Broderick woos “Dr Rogers”, a female haematologist who says that her favourite rom-com is Grease 2. This turns the dire 1982 flick into a running theme of the evening. Another running theme comes from my girlfriend who Broderick finds out is a teacher. “A teacher of what?” He asks. Slightly lost for words, she replies, “Art, design & technology…er.. geography,” which he successfully represents as a manic non-sequitur. She thus becomes the designer of the rocket ship at the centre of the story, a choice of designer he later reveals to be almost the undoing of the whole operation.

By the end Abandonman have multiple audience members on stage for a ridiculous play-off involving a well-known children’s game. The juxtaposition of a very hard-looking tattooed man rooting for his brother to win this contest is funny in itself. The show, only an hour but just right at that length, climaxes with a song that’s given its title by Rosanna. She thinks long and hard and decides to call it “Pointy Claws”. Thus we finish with everyone heartily bellowing a chorus of “We came, we saw, and we got pointy claws,” all grinning like fools.

Moonrock Boombox is a hugely energetic turn, a romping showcase for Abandonman’s impeccably fast wit, as well as briefly, and possibly for the only time in her life, putting my girlfriend in charge of an intergalactic holo-deck.

Overleaf: watch Abandonman freestyling backstage before an Ed Sheeran gig at the Manchester Academy