In this solo show, Justin blends personal stories with tales of iconic film stars to get to the essence of the forty-year-old woman…
Making a fabulous entrance in a colourful silk ensemble and high heels, Justin captivates the audience right from the start. They recount their childhood with a long-suffering mother and alcoholic grandmother who would let them literally play in the closet- a somewhat on the nose metaphor!
We jump around thematically a little, with everything from Justin’s mother’s odd ‘Amish pineapple’ room decor, wanting to be the old lady from Gilligan’s Island ‘because she drank martinis and judged people’, picking the campest outfit for the Easter service, and a very close to the bone drag queen name. Justin pulls off the tone shifts though, weaving in anecdotes about Bette Davis, Lauren Bacall and their all-time favourite, Elizabeth Taylor.
The idea of coming into the fullness of oneself is a key theme; Taylor’s later era as an AIDS activist when the world turned its back on thousands of sufferers was a powerful move at the time, as were other older female film stars deciding to embrace powerful villain roles on screen. We often complain we’re not rich enough, liked enough, but as Justin points out the one thing there’s never enough of is time, and they illustrate this brilliantly through a moving story about a friend that left a fair few eyes damp in the Dairy Room.
We can all come out of the corner and be the fearless forty-year-old woman we want to be, and Justin is the perfect mentor.
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Justin Elizabeth Sayre Is A Forty Year Old Woman is at Underbelly Bristo Square from Aug 5-30th (not 17th) at 18:10