Fletcher Jones -The Life and Times Thereof
One of the lovely aspects of The International Melbourne Comedy Festival is leaving the relative safety of the Town Hall precinct and venturing out to discover the atmospheric, hidden little bars that Melbourne is becoming so famous for. Club F4 is in the heart of the city, but slightly down a lane and up 3 flights of stairs to discover a large warm space with a long bar and comfy seats, but this wasn’t the right place for our show, after a trip to the bar it was up a few more stairs to an intimate room with a small stage and bench seating.
Fletcher Jones – The Life and Times Thereof…. was mostly as it described itself, a musical biography of a man who shares his name with the rather old fashioned clothing store, but there was not much in the way of character work and I didn’t discern more that a couple of musical styles. It was performed by two young friendly chaps who call themselves Smart Casual. They reminded me a little of Tenacious D with the one who looked more like Jack Black taking the part of Fletcher throughout. Beginning with a spiritual welcome and Baptism rap that had me a little worried, as I’m no fan of preaching or rappin’, it turned out to be the only real diversion from their fairly gentle and mellow tunes. We were taken on the journey through Fletcher’s teens being teased about his name and bullied for wearing his uniform on Casual day which is called something strange in Sydney and their obvious addition of the Melbourne term along side the Sydney version got some big laughs. Fletcher sought advice from an alien Scarecrow (not quite sure why), with the song “Who would you rather do?” which amusingly captured Teen banter and then received dubious advice about girls from his uncle Wayne. ‘Chicks love that shit’ was one of my favourite songs featuring sampling from some cliché ‘chic songs’ such ‘I am Woman’ and ‘You’re beautiful’. A few other fun samples popped up through the show, as well as a song that was described as being ‘in the style of Jack Johnson’, which was completely lost on me, as I don’t know who he is.
Unfortunately about two-thirds through the show, the boys took Fletcher down a dark and stormy path from which they were sadly unable to return. The laughs stopped and as they were not aiming to move the audience to tears, in their otherwise light hearted show, it got a bit awkward. Comedians throughout the centuries have been able to find lots of dark humour in death, even when kiddies are involved, but it was not really evident in this show. If it was their first performance I could understand, but it appears, from the Sydney reference changes that the show has been run before and they might have had a chance to work on the last quietly received 20 minutes. They tried desperately to bring the audience back at the end, but it didn’t quite work. I felt that Fletcher was lacking the grand flaw of a truly tragic figure and perhaps his downfall should have been more closely related to his name or something. It was a shame because they were talented boys, with well blending voices and some silly songs that they put together to tell a story. Unfortunately that story got a bit lost along the way, but Smart Casual is definitely a pair to keep an eye on.
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