By McKenzie Fetters
On their website, Dakaboom describes their show as “[having to] be experienced to be understood.” Upon reading this description, I was intrigued, so I decided to attend Dakaboom’s show on Saturday, Oct. 17, at 10 p.m. in the Esch-Hurvis studio of the Warch Campus Center. After experiencing their show, I can assure you that their self-description is correct: Dakaboom is a show like no other.
Comprised of two young men, Ben McClain and Paul Peglar, Dakaboom incorporates many different facets of comedy into their performance. On Saturday, the group started their show off by hopping up onstage, playing the first few measures of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” and replacing the opening line “just a small town girl” by singing “Just — KIDDING” and then halting the music entirely, jolting the audience into laughter.
Well-versed in beat-boxing, singing and vocal impressions, Dakaboom played off of each other, breaking into random harmonies and songs that best fit their comedic routine. One of their self-composed songs was a “Cheesy Love Song” that contained numerous puns involving cheese. Another hailed being single as a state of self-actualization and playfully scorned romantic relationships.
Dakaboom also did their own four minute “commercial break,” during which they showcased their vocal talents and sang back-to-back the well-known jingles to many popular commercials, such as Meow Mix, Juicy Fruit and Kit-Kat.
Dakaboom obviously felt comfortable in front of an audience, since they frequently reached out and asked for feedback on what they were doing and what they should do next in their set. Random funny bits dotted the program, and one got the feeling that some of what was performed was improvised on the spot. At one point, one of the pair did an impression of a run-on sentence — he walked slowly offstage mid-sentence and eventually trailed back to the mic to finish up what he was saying.
The pair also debuted their “first hit single,” which was comprised of several seconds of frozen silence. They sang several more songs, some parodies and some not, all performed with vigor.
The pair also did a little bit of nontraditional stand-up comedy, in which one of them pretended to not know how to be a stand-up comic and the other mocked him from the sidelines. This bit ended with the pair staging a fight that ended with one of them walking offstage and out of the auditorium for a good 10 minutes, leaving the audience bewildered and nonplussed. Then the remaining member performed a solo beatboxing set until his partner returned to the stage, whereupon the two made up in front of the audience by proceeding to talk the other up by stating their achievements.
Self-proclaimed as “racy,” Dakaboom’s jokes were, on occasion, a little too edgy for my taste, and I felt their performance to be overall very rehearsed and a little bit too catered to satisfying the audience’s supposed tastes. However, I was surprised by the show at almost every turn, and if risqué humor appeals to you, then Dakaboom will not disappoint.