Published 17th Mar 2025, 10:49 BST

Wild Rose, Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh ★★★★★

Eilidh. Eilidh, Eilidh, Oran Mor, Glasgow ★★★★

In the world of Scottish theatre, opening nights don’t come any bigger than this weekend’s world premiere at the Lyceum of Wild Rose, writer Nicole Taylor’s new stage version of her award-winning 2018 film starring Jessie Buckley. The show marks the final weeks of playwright David Greig’s brutally challenging decade as the theatre’s artistic director, and the arrival as his successor of the brilliant James Brining.

It also marks the return to directing in Scotland of John Tiffany, star of the early years of the National Theatre of Scotland, and now a leading international director; and together, he and Nicole Taylor, with the show’s star Dawn Sievewright, a blisteringly talented 16-strong company, and a fine eight-piece band, have put together a brilliant, down-home blockbuster of a show, as deeply in touch with all the primal pains and passions of life at its toughest as the great country music tradition itself.

In the show, rising Scottish star of the musical stage Sievewright plays Rose-Lynn Harlan, a working-class Glasgow girl with an uncrushable spirit and a huge talent as a country singer. Now approaching her late twenties, she longs to go to Nashville and try her luck; but the intervening years have brought her not only a criminal conviction and a year-long prison sentence, but two kids aged 11 and 9, who have been cared for during her time in jail by her long-suffering but sharply critical mum Marion.

All of these tensions in Rose-Lynn’s life approach crisis-point when she lies about her past - no jail, no kids - to get an upmarket cleaning job with middle-class Susannah, who, it emerges, actually has the contacts to help Rose-Lynn realise her dream; and in a show punctuated at every turn by country classics from Outlaw State Of Mind to Tacoma, Sievewright gives the performance of a lifetime as Rose-Lynn, stubborn, gifted, reckless, but always singing like the star she is. Blythe Duff is simply superb as her mother Marion, bringing the house down with her own big ballad number; and at the performance I saw, Lily Ferguson and Alfie Campbell were heartbreakingly brilliant as Rose-Lynn’s children, Wynonna and Lyle.

Around them, a fabulous company - co-choreographed by Steven Hoggett and Vicki Manderson - sing and line-dance their way through the show as if their lives depended on it. There’s perhaps a slight feeling, towards the show’s thoughtful end, that their vast array of talents are not being used quite enough. Yet it would only take one more big, glorious number to remind us of the full strength in depth of this thrilling show; as Rose-Lynn finally understands that, however tough it may be, she cannot win the stellar country career she longs for without fully facing the truth about herself, her past, her lovely kids, and the magnificent city that made her.

MJ Deans, Chelsea Grace and Annie Grace in Eilidh, Eilidh, Eilidh | Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

Rebellious and indomitable women also fill the stage in the latest offering from the Play, Pie, Pint spring season, written and directed by writer and actress Lana Pheutan. In her debut Play, Pie and Pint drama Eilidh, Eilidh, Eilidh, Pheutan plunges into the heart of the current housing crisis in holiday hot spots like Skye, bringing together MJ Deans and Chelsea Grace as Eilidh and Eilidh Bheag - two Skye cousins in their twenties, dealing with the struggle to build any kind of life there - and Annie Grace as Eilidh NicilleMhicheil, their old Gaelic teacher, whose cottage they have just invaded after a drunken night out.

The encounter among the three women is loud, funny, and sometimes a tad schematic and implausible. The point made by the play, through, is as sharp and timely as they come; looking back to the Battle of the Braes, and to the long story of Hebridean women standing in defence of their homes and communities, against an oppression that takes new forms with every generation, but always meets the same stubborn resistance.

Wild Rose is at the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, until 19 April. Eilidh, Eilidh, Eilidh is at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, from 19-22 March.

Theatre reviews: Wild Rose | Eilidh, Eilidh, Eilidh

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