Country music is having a moment. Over the weekend the Country To Country music festival arrived in Glasgow while Wild Rose was playing to sold-out audiences in Edinburgh.
It’s a barnstorming opening with Country Girl. The programme notes inform us that it was a song co-written by, among others, the late Duffy and Mani of Primal Scream, the latter also an original member of The Stone Roses. Rose-Lynn and her fellow prisoners take control of the stage and a special mention to Hannah Jarrett Scott as Kathy/Amanda who brings dynamics and personality to everything she takes on. I don’t think I’ve seen a more authentic Scottish character on stage with the beat and nuance of Glasgow than Dawn Sievewright as Rose-Lynn. Her comic timing and patter are a joy to watch.
The heart-to-heart scenes with Blythe Duff as Rose-Lynn’s mother Marion are compelling taking us into a kitchen-sink drama of Shelagh Delaney quality.
When a tear rolls down Duff’s cheek during one emotive scene it almost steals the show. There’s an audio cameo from legendary BBC Radio 2 D.J Whispering Bob Harris who offers Rose-Lynn some advice, when he asks about her social media output, her response is an arresting one for these times.
She innately knows it’s a phoney medium and the suggestion only invites the rebel to rise within her. A talent born in the wrong time but a country star in the waiting is beyond little doubt. While she believes Glasgow to be the wrong place to come from in many ways it couldn’t be better and when Harris encourages her to write, a mental shift gradually begins. Glasgow (No Place Like Home) invites the character to have an afterlife, perhaps a way out of this cycle of poverty, prison and violence.
Sure, she’s made some wrong choices out of desperation, but that only leaves her to be judged further and kicked while she is down. There’s some justice in the world that Rose-Lynn was played by an authentic working-class Glaswegian who brought something of her narrative to this memorable performance.
Wild Rose plays at The Royal Lyceum Theatre until 19 April.
