Wild Rose, the award-winning movie about a Glasgow country singer, is to be turned into a musical. Writer Nicole Taylor is adapting her 2018 screenplay and working with John Tiffany, the director of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. The show will begin at the Royal Lyceum theatre in Edinburgh in March 2025, with further dates expected to be announced.
Taylor adapted the recent Netflix hit One Day, and her other small-screen credits include Three Girls, The Nest and The C Word. She said she always believed in the dramatic potential of Wild Rose: “I held on to the rights, even though as a first-time writer I had no negotiating position and I’d never written a word for theatre. I knew it would take theatrical form at some point.”
Starring Jessie Buckley, Julie Walters and Sophie Okonedo, the film tells the story of Rose-Lynn Harlan, a former prisoner and single mum whose sights are set on Nashville stardom. Working as a cleaner by day, she fronts a country band by night, but her dreams of fame are tempered by the reality of caring for her two young children.
“The dramatic question feels as enduring as ever,” said Taylor. “That is: once you are a mum, what are you allowed to want? And if you’ve got talent, is that a trump card?”
Tiffany, who directed the musical Once and the National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch, said Taylor’s film was perfect for the stage: “It’s a gorgeous mixture of a truthful, engaging story and the beautiful genre of country music. Rose-Lynn is such a fantastic Glasgow character, the contradiction within her; she frustrates you and makes you fall in love with her in equal measure. I could see it on stage immediately.”
Taylor has been a fan of country music since the age of 12 and is delighted by its recent rise in popularity. “As Rose-Lynn says, country music is about getting what’s in here out, and that feels inherently right for a musical where people express themselves in song,” she said. “I wouldn’t be a writer if I hadn’t discovered country music because I still use it to understand what I’m feeling and to be able to describe it.”
The Netflix adaptation of One Day attracted audiences of 15.2 million but Taylor said she is disproportionately excited about working in the theatre for the first time. “I’m overjoyed. It’s such a responsibility: you’re getting people out of their houses, making them physically sit there. I feel such a responsibility to be really good – more than if you’re watching telly and you can just turn it off,” she said.
The musical runs from 6 March to 5 April and will feature songs by Dolly Parton, Carrie Underwood, Wynonna Judd, Chris Stapleton, Caitlyn Smith, the Chicks, and Patty Griffin, as well as the film’s original song, Glasgow (No Place Like Home). It will be choreographed by Steven Hoggett and Vicki Manderson, with a set designed by Chloe Lamford.
“It will be very different from the film,” said Tiffany. “There will be a large band on stage in order to get the fullness of the songs and it will go very lightly from world to world.”
