- Robyn Von Swank
- Neil Hamburger
Whatever the hell Neil Hamburger does, he’s been doing it for more than 20 years. The Tony Clifton-esque alter ego of Australian-born musician Gregg Turkington, Hamburger confounds—I hesitate to use the word entertains—audiences with standup sets that are more accurately described as one-man performance art pieces. With his incessant wailing about his ex-wife and elaborate onstage breakdowns, Hamburger subverts the neurotic funnyman persona of Bill Hicks, Marc Maron, and George Carlin by pushing his material into grim and decidedly bizarre territory. Sickly, sweaty, and almost always cradling a few tumblers of booze in his arm, Hamburger doles out clumsy, hacky jokes and one-liners that are either pointedly offensive or just plain stupid. It’s Turkington’s dissident way of simultaneously experimenting with the form of standup—his years of playing in punk bands no doubt contributes to this—and illustrating just how disheartening comedy can get.
