Presented by Socks and Sandals
@ Paper String Plastic
FRIDAY 2 March (until March 16)

I don’t think I can overstate how much I thoroughly enjoyed this show. Just Like the Movies does not have any death-defying stunts nor does it make you think long and hard about anything in particular, but golly it’s a lot of fun.

Matthew Gregan makes his way slowly across the small stage at Paper String Plastic, singing about a place. He takes up his guitar as well as a position sitting on an amp under an American flag. His vocals are a softer version of the music playing as the audience first enters the venue: a bit bluesy, a bit country. The space is intimate and when Josephine Were walks on the stage the audience is captivated from the first words she utters. Were, sometimes in rhyme and sometimes not, declares that she is going to America. There she hopes to find a man, someone to love, “just like the movies.” Such a declaration sounds cloyingly sweet and saccharine but the jokes that are immediately apparent and Were’s honest, sometimes self-deprecating delivery keep them from being so. As the show progresses with Were encountering bad men with movie-star looks seemingly everywhere she goes, the audience’s attention is completely transfixed. Their heads follow the movements she makes on the stage and everyone is laughing, from the twenty-something beardy guy on my left (who smelt vaguely of beer) to the fifty-something couple on my right. Were studied with physical theatre company SITI in New York and her physicality combined with winning facial expressions, absurd situations and near-flawless timing make her the star of the show.

This is not to downplay the role that musician Gregan plays, however. His guitar is the perfect soundtrack to Were’s words, enhancing the moods and setting of the show subtly. With influences from Bob Dylan to B.B. King, the aim was to “make the music regional”, Gregan says. Whilst the obvious on-stage interaction between Were and Gregan is minimal – confined to the occasional, purposeful look at a dramatic music change, that kind of thing – the nature of the (mostly) blues music played matches the places and times that Were uses to break the show into segments and give it order.

The fact that Were’s speech and Gregan’s music match so perfectly is not surprising when you hear how much time the pair have spent thinking about creating something like Just Like the Movies. They’ve known each other a long time and have always intended to collaborate on a project. Were and Gregan had discussed the idea of setting some of her performance poetry to music before she headed on a study-holiday to the United States. Whilst there, Were noticed that there was a lot of bad stand-up comedy around but questioned whether she could do better. “I decided to challenge myself,” she smiles. While travelling Were had been writing poetry – the sort intended to be performed rather than anthologised – and first tried them out in comedy clubs. When she returned to Adelaide it took a lot of coaxing and a lot of cider to convince her to share the more embarrassing of these poems with Gregan. “There’s a lot of me in there,” she admits, a lot of the stories within Just Like the Movies are based on Were’s own experiences. There’s a story about spooning on a plane that I don’t blame Were for being embarrassed to share, but as Gregan says “they’re the only ones I really want to hear”. Were’s most uncomfortable moments are those that the audience seems to find most entertaining. Just Like the Movies began as a 15 minute segment in Bird Calls, a collection of solo female performances, at Adelaide’s 2011 Fringe Festival. It was then developed into its present form in time for the 2011 Melbourne Fringe Festival, although according to both Were and Gregan it varies a little every night depending on audience reaction.

Were and Gregan, under the directorial influence of Terence Crawford, have produced a show that flows easily, is funny and poignant, and manages to use both rhyme and pop culture references without being at all annoying. If you’re a poor student type who can only afford to go see one cheapish show (or even if you’re not), go see Just Like the Movies. It might not make you smarter, but it’ll sure cheer you up.

For more info, check out http://justlikethemoviesperformance.tumblr.com/