Inside the making of Wild Rose - Scotland's new country music-inspired stage show

Nicole Taylor is happy to admit her love of country music singled her out for ridicule among her circle of teenage friends growing up in Glasgow.

Dawn Sievewright will star as Glasgow country singer Rose-Lynn Harlan in the new Scottish stage musical Wild Rose | Matt Crockett/Louise Richardson

These days, the writer is still trying to get her head around the soaring popularity of a genre of music that would see her treated as a "laughing stock".

Nicole Taylor, Blythe Duff and Dawn Sievewright are working together on the new Scottish stage musical Wild Rose. | Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

And her story of a country-obsessed singer desperate to leave Glasgow behind for a new life in Nashville is widely expected to be one of the biggest Scottish theatre productions of 2025.

Dawn Sievewright and Blythe Duff will play part-time cleaner Rose-Lynn Harlan and her mother Marion in new musical Wild Rose, which Taylor is adapting from her award-winning film screenplay.

Director John Tiffany and actress Blythe Duff are working on the new Scottish stage musical Wild Rose. | Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

The production, which premieres at Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum in March, is Taylor's first ever work for the stage. The show will also see her realise a long-held dream of working with director John Tiffany, since she first saw one of his best-known shows, Black Watch.

Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

Brought up in Glasgow, Taylor moved to London to study law before breaking into TV. Her most recent work was as lead writer on the Netflix series One Day.

Dawn Sievewright will play Glasgow country singer Rose-Lynn Harlan in the new Scottish stage musical Wild Rose. | Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

She recalled: "Theatre always felt like quite a rarefied thing to me. When I was growing up, I didn't go to the theatre at all, apart from the King’s panto.

"When I moved down to London, I felt that going to the theatre was something that other people did. It was quite daunting.

Wild Rose star Jessie Buckley and writer Nicole Taylor pictured before its Scottish premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival in 2019. Picture: John Devlin

"It was only when I went to see Black Watch that my whole relationship with theatre changed. It made me feel that it was a world that I could learn about."

Jessie Buckley and Julie Walters played Rose-Lynn and Marion in the original film, which featured songs by Emmylou Harris, Wynonna Judd, Hank Snow, Patty Griffin and Chris Stapleton.

Taylor said: "County music was very big in my life when I was writing Wild Rose. But it used to be the love that dare not speak its name.

"When I used to go to the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday and my pals were off to watch Take That at the SECC, I was the laughing stock.

"Suddenly, country music is very popular, which was just so unexpected. I just never saw that happening. It's really quite dizzying.”

The musical begins as Rose-Lynn emerges from prison determined to pursue her dreams of country stardom, only to face opposition from Marion, who has been looking after her two young children.

Duff said: "It's fair to say they have a frosty relationship. Marion is very Glaswegian and she takes no prisoners. There's probably a lot of judgement about how Rose-Lynn goes through life.

"There's a feistiness in Rose-Lynn, but she’s a law unto herself. She cannot help, but blow it a wee bit. The audience will feel they want to give her a shake, but will also be rooting for her."

Sievewright said: "When Rose-Lynn comes out of jail, you can tell she’s full of life and joy. She's raucous, a bit of a joker and a wildcard, who gets herself into trouble. But she also has two young children.

"Wild Rose is about the solid love she has for country music and her dream of going to Nashville, with the pull of her responsibilities at home, which she's never really taken seriously. Her journey is about whether to put yourself first to fulfil your dreams. There's this really beautiful bedlam in her trying to figure out what to do."

Sievewright and Duff have both worked on the development of the musical, which will feature the songs of Dolly Parton, Carrie Underwood, Caitlyn Smith and The Chicks.

Duff said: "I went down to London for a week-long workshop a year past in October. It was a tantalising taster of what the show could be.

"John Tiffany was telling me it was going to happen in 2025. My actual words to him were 'I might be dead by 2025'. But I felt very buoyed up and energised after that week."

Duff has developed a growing interest in music, which has seen her take singing lessons, release short music films, appear in a podcast musical and join a new band.

She said: "I've definitely been concentrating on music much more over the last four or five years, in a way that I've maybe not had the chance, or the confidence, to do before.

"Once you say that you're keen to do something. people will say 'can you come and do this'. I've felt really comforted by how encouraging people have been.

"If something comes through the door with music attached to it, my antennae is definitely going to be up. I've been in the business for 42 years now. Things need to keep pushing me and I need to keep thinking I'm being challenged.

"If I'm going to do a musical, I might as well do it with people that I've worked with a lot and really trust."

Duff has worked extensively with John Tiffany since the 1990s, when he was starting out at Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre. Duff, who starred in STV crime drama Taggart for 20 years, highlights how her musical theatre background can be traced back to some of her earliest stage work, with ground-breaking Scottish company Wildcat.

She said: "Music has always been a very strong part of theatre in Scotland. It's not like we're surprised when we hear musical elements within plays. The difference with this show is that it's very much a musical.

"What's really important in a musical is that the songs kind of inform the next beat of the piece. They move the action and the characters on, and leave the audience with a different feeling."

Sievewright said: "The musicals we make in Scotland always feel like they're really rooted in the music and the story. They're almost like when someone gets a guitar out in a pub lock-in or at a campfire.

"Wild Rose isn't just going to be for people who want to see musicals or plays. It's going to be for gig-lovers and the real deep-rooted country fans. They're going to love it."

Taylor said: "My dream for this show is that packs of women come to it for a really good night out.

"It's about mothers and daughters, belonging, outsiderness and coming home. It's emotional, it's funny and it's got some belting country tunes in it. It's super-different from anything I've worked on before, but I'm going at it with gusto."