What Rhymes with Cars and Girls

What Rhymes with Cars and Girls is a rich, engrossing work in which all components come together with an inordinate sense of largesse and satisfying attention to detail. It is a very impressive first major directorial work from Clare Watson, who gives what was initially a boy’s story a good sense of balance. 

This show exudes a great spirit of cooperation between all creative artists.  It is awesome to see a new work, on opening night, on which, seemingly, all the groundwork has been done.  So all that remains is for performers to have an excellent time growing with the experience and audiences to happily relax and enjoy.

The text – a love story, written by Aiden Fennessy, as inspired by Tim Roger’s 1999 album of the same name, is full of gritty realism. Each of the two protagonists describes the lives they live with funny and witty self-deprecating irony.  As audience, one becomes immersed in a very rocky love story that is engaging and so relatable to. It has the power to touch raw and sensitive nerves.  Doubtless it has similarities to the real life experiences of many in the audience – maybe most poignantly to those who are forty-something.   There are plenty of opportunities to laugh and to squirm.  It does have a very 1990’s flavor that is certainly due to the music, but hey surely messy relationships, the urge to run, shattered hearts and total confusion are universal and timeless.

The two actors, Johnny Carr as Johnno and Sophie Ross as Tash, work together as an evenly matched team. They convey an organic and spontaneous chemistry as they sing, describe and act out aspects of their torrid and seemingly ill-fated romance.  The whole steps a little further into the future than Rogers’s (autobiographical) album and doesn’t end with quite the same sense of despondence that can lurk after listening to it.

There is such a generosity of spirit evident in Tim Rogers’s work as Musical Director/Musician and his songs played with the assistance of the awesome Ben Franz and Xani Kolac are nothing short of sublime. 

Andrew Bailey’s Set Design openly allows for the free interpretation of spaces and places and strongly endorses particular venues such as a recording studio which would seem to be appropriate given that the whole work is predicated on a much loved album.

Is it a musical or a play?

Get to see it and decide for yourself you won’t be disappointed.

Suzanne Sandow

Images – top (L-R) Tim Rogers, Sophie Carr, Xani Kolac and Ben Franz and lower (L-R) Johnny Carr & Tim Rogers. Photographer: Jeff Busby.

Cast – Johnny Carr and Sophie Ross

Band – Tim Rogers, Ben Franz and Xani Kolac

Director – Clare Watson

Musical Director – Tim Rogers

Set Designer – Andrew Bailey

Costume Designer – Kate Davis

Lighting Designer Richard Vabre

Sound Designer – Russell Goldsmith