If you can’t be sentimental in a show about country music, when can you be? The most affecting moments in this big-hearted musical come when tough talking gives way to tenderness. Like the genre itself, Wild Rose is forthright, vibrant and emotionally raw.
Wittily adapted by Nicole Taylor from her 2018 film of the same name and staged with elan by John Tiffany, it is the story of ex-con Rose-Lynn Harlan as she tries to reconcile the need to care for her children with her ambitions to make it as a singer. Believing no country star ever came out of Glasgow, she sets her sights on Nashville. That is, after she has dealt with the cleaning job, ankle tag and night-time curfew.
This is all the excuse choreographers Steven Hoggett and Vicki Manderson need to stage exuberant line dances, propelled by Ali Roocroft’s jolly eight-piece band sitting across the back of the open set by Chloe Lamford. That’s all great fun, as is the class-based comedy provided by the hard-up singer who uses “Shazam for bathrooms” to identify the price of fancy floor tiles and the appeal court judge who is surprisingly well versed in country music’s origins in Irish/Scots folk. Beneath the fanfare, this is also a show about inequality of opportunity.
But what strikes deep is the scenes of fragility. It is when Rose-Lynn (Dawn Sievewright) quietly articulates why country music means so much to her: “Three chords and the truth.” It is in the delay before she finds a way to sing with her children (on my night, Alfie Campbell and Lily Ferguson, both excellent). And it is when mother Marion (Blythe Duff) stands alone and vulnerable for a second-half solo.
Through it all, Sievewright is a star in the most unstarry way. Quite brilliantly, she captures Rose-Lynn’s charm and streetwise patter as well as her defensiveness and fear. Scarcely off the stage, she retains an air of modesty even while singing, gloriously, without fanfare or histrionics. As with the film, the ending does not quite deliver the feelgood bounce you crave – but, fronting a joyful ensemble, Sievewright’s aim is true.
• At the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, until 19 April
