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Ed Hamell
The Terrorism Of Everyday Life
 Directed by Kate Valentine
Associate Director Richard Hurst
'Hamell is Bill Hicks, Hunter S. Thompson and Joe Strummer all rolled into one sweaty, snarling, pugnacious pit bull of a man. And he's scabrously, filthily, twistedly funny.' Philadelphia Weekly
Under the moniker Hamell On Trial, Ed Hamell has already attracted the attention of the British music press through his albums winning such plaudits as five-star review in Uncut. Now he's honed an hour that mixes his angry, political music with stand-up comedy.
This new show looks at Hamell's life, ranging from memories of road trips with his father, through recollections of the bizarre jobs he held down before his performing career took off, to his recent experience of becoming a parent himself. At the Edinburgh festival in 2007, where Hamell launched the show, it met with a rapturous critical and popular response, winning a coveted Herald Angel award and playing to sell-out houses. A West End transfer to Soho Theatre followed in February 2008, and most recently Hamell completed a return visit to the Edinburgh festival ahead of festival dates in October 2008. He is available for limited UK and European dates in 2009.
The Herald - 5 stars
Ed Hamell's life has been flashing before his eyes since he suffered a near-fatal car crash at the turn of the century, after which he reconstructed himself as a motor-mouthed, comedic, acoustic, punk-metal one-man band. The Terrorism of Everyday Life tackles his story chronologically, starting in 1964 with the Beatles arriving in the US, when he was aged 10; this is an explosive biographical hour. Loaded with finely honed anecdotes punctuated by machine-gun bursts of relevant songs, Hamell unerringly hits the target. His only musical weapon is a 1937 acoustic Gibson guitar, eulogised in the bittersweet paen to hire-purchase agreement, Three Ships. We are transported to the gents' toilet in the Knitting Factory in New York City, which doubled as a changing room when he was previewing this show earlier in the year; we share in the tale of a homophobe who overcame his prejudice to get high on the ashes of a friend of a friend who died from Aids; and there's a deathbed scene funnier than a whole series of Six Feet Under. His spoof commercial for a fast-food joint - The Trough - would be light relief were it not such a vicious indictment of western dietary habits, while the whole room singing "**** it" could well be the most cathartic experience for a Fringe audience. Pathos without sentiment and comment without compromise. This is a performer at his peak.
Metro - 4 stars
What should you do when your son asks if you've ever done anything illegal? Easy if your name is Ed Hamell. 'I'm gonna lie! I'm gonna lie!' he foams on Inquiring Minds, the opening track on his recent album, Songs For Parents Who Enjoy Drugs. Billed as comedy, Hamell's Edinburgh debut is more a one-man DIY odyssey through his decade-spanning back catalogue, unapologetically righteous world view and his life experiences. Indeed, if Bill Hicks had ever tried his hand at bile-fuelled blues-punk, it might not have sounded too far removed from Halfway, a fretboard-leaping, self-deprecating rant against mediocrity. By all accounts, however, Hicks never tended a crack bar in upstate New York, a stint during which Hamell most likely honed his deftness for speaking his mind while keeping the crowd onside. This is a man who could deal with a brawl. Not that he has to here; a veteran of 250 shows a year, Hamell is a consummate performer who can salaciously slaver a ridiculous ode to cunnilingus before recounting the double death of his parents, all the while keeping the audience so enthralled they don't notice the gear shift.
Scotland on Sunday - 4 stars
One-man show Hamell On Trial also uses rock'n'roll to tell a tale. In this case, the life story of Ed Hamell, a man who has done it all so that we don't have to. A punk rock raconteur, Hamell rips the heart out of US consumerism by trolling through the degenerate underbelly which is its flipside. Street-wise, packed with great one-liners and righteous in its fury, this is surely the only show in town to feature a gag about making a homophobe smoke the ashes of an Aids victim.
Chortle - 4 stars
Hamell is a throwback to comedy's pre-corporate days, when stand-up was part of the underground counter-culture, not a shortcut to a toilet roll voiceover. He's worked in a crack bar - 'if Night Of The Living Dead had a Cheers' - to subsidise his art and has hung out with dealers, criminals and, worse yet, musicians. His comedy carries that same seedy, earthy, uncompromising attitude of the angry rock star, perfectly suited to the Underbelly's dank underground setting. ÔFor every John Lennon, there's a Richard Pryor, for every Kurt Cobain there's a Bill Hicks,' that's his philosophy, and one he lives by. Hamell doesn't strictly class himself as a comedian, though he can be brilliant funny as he recounts his various anecdotes. But he's just as excellent a storyteller and musician, angrily thrashing his 1937 Fender guitar through a serious of crashing, angry tracks. He looks slightly intimidating, too, a weather-beaten face testament to the wisdom of 53 years on the tough planet. Plus he adds to that menacing attitude with demonic eyebrows and goatie beard, shaved skull and frightening grimace. But, confounding expectations, he celebrates humanity - and can even be jaunty if needs be. He's got a very jolly little tune about smoking crack, for instance. The music and the message are the priorities, getting a laugh comes second to pounding out a great rock tune; but it's still wonderfully funny, even more so because any jokes are firmly grounded in a greater context and an unwavering, no-nonsense stance. His anecdotes can be brilliant, too - most notably his yarn about smoking the ashes of a dead friend. It could have been played for pure slapstick, but Hamell injects it with poignancy and an unexpected payoff. It really is funnier because it's true. If Hamell's on trial, the only thing he's guilty of is kicking ass.
Three Weeks - 5 stars
This is not another edgy Fringe comedy. No, Hamell takes edgy on in the first minutes of the show, and then leaves it way behind with a song about oral sex, followed, without missing a beat, with a song about sickness, death and suicide in his own family. Not many performers could turn this material into ragingly funny comedy and rock; he takes on politics, family truth, religion and death with angry passion, bitingly caustic wit and a 'face solo' that quite simply defies words. All this and he still comes out with hope. The man may well be a genius. Obscene, outrageous and brilliant.
Fest - 4 stars
Hamell on Trial isn't your run-of-the-mill comedy show, but then Ed Hamell isn't your conventional comedian. He's a punk-rocker, an anarchist, a proponent of recreational drug use and a savage critic of today's monolithic culture all rolled into one. He's also as funny a man as you'll see anywhere in Edinburgh this month. Already a cult hero in the US, Hammell was once just an angry musician, but his 2007 act has been transformed to include not only his trademark punk-folk ditties but stand-up and satire as well. His humour ranges from the downright silly to the fiendishly dark, stopping at all bases in between. There are songs about pussy and stories about crack cocaine and cat litter, all unleashed at frantic pace upon an audience that doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. If you're a shy, retiring type, do not go to see this show. Judging by their stunned, twisted faces, some of today's audience will probably never risk going to see a comedian again. Hammell's razor-sharp wit and brutal honesty will cut too close to the bone for some people. If however you're a more laid-back kind of character, and tales about kids in church choirs taking mescalin sounds like the sort of thing you might have a chuckle at, go see Hammell on Trial today. As the man himself would say, it's better than crack.
The Stage
A 50-something bald guy who plays a mean guitar, tells great stories, unapologetically celebrates a rock-n-roll lifestyle and controls a room with absolute authority, American Ed Hamell gives a nightly masterclass most Fringe comedians could benefit from. Hamell tells some jokes and sings others in original songs accompanied on a hard-rocking wired-up 1937 acoustical guitar. Whether it's his teenage self's illusion-destroying encounter with John Lennon, his own later revenge on the teenage manager of a pizza place, or the bizarre experience of tripping on mescaline at a Catholic folk mass - in short, whether the joke is at his expense or others - he shares his infectious conviction that taking life too seriously is a mistake. Nothing is so serious that he can't see the humour in it or at least celebrate its humanity, whether it be a friend's anarchic behaviour at his mother's deathbed or the potentially tragic story of Hamell's own parents' deaths, and the tightrope between the comic and serious is expertly walked as he wonders how he'll answer his own son's inevitable questions about his life choices.
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