Greg Fleet: Heroes
Live Review
Melbourne International Comedy Festival

Greg Fleet is an undoubted superhero of Australian comedy, going into each night to valiantly fight the dark forces of blandness and insincerity. Now this uncaped crusader examines the idea of everyday heroics and the line between the brave and the stupid… with little surprise as to which side of the fence he usually falls.

In truth, this is a collection of only tenuously connected anecdotes, but it’s no real criticism, as Fleety has more than his fair share of gripping first-hand anecdotes from the various scrapes he has got himself into over the years.

He’s been kidnapped by Thai mobsters, cornered in a blind Glaswegian alley by knife-wielding thugs determined to cut him up, intimidated by a towering steroid abuser while in rehab and, even more terrifyingly, faced the baying mobs of Edinburgh’s Late N Live bearpit a dozen times.

Some of these he’s mentioned before, but they all have a place in this entertaining anthology. Fleet’s a fantastic storyteller, but his greatest asset is his authenticity. While some comics can spin a yarn about the slightest of everyday incidents, Fleet has a lifetime of properly dramatic incidents to mine – not least because he was a heroin addict long before Russell Brand stole that idea.

He also sees the humour in the most serious of situations and celebrates those who are similarly impish, from the air hostess dismissing a prissy passenger to the cab driver who pranked him expertly.

The superhero motif comes from his childhood memories of worshipping the Green Arrow, and re-enacting the expert archer’s crimefighting battles – but on a very tight budget. Plus he was once bitten by a spider, even if the hilariously humiliating consequences were far removed from acquiring superhuman abilities.

A serious, even poignant, story of a washed-up superhero bookends the show, creating an intense atmosphere of despair that Fleet gleefully shatters. But the fact he can create it in the first place further demonstrates his brilliant ability to draw you into his tales.

The hour’s full of ribald good humour, more often than not aimed at Fleety’s own stupidity at getting himself into such scrapes in the first place – not to mention the combination of idiocy and blind chance that got him out of them. You’ve just gotta love him.