Picture: Robbie McFadzean
Legacy: A Mother’s Song continues at Assembly Rainy Hall until 25 August 2018 (not 13).
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
Born of a remarkable collaboration between the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the American Music Theatre Project in Chicago, the ‘Legacy’ series of new musicals explores heritage, history and the common resounding voices of our ancestors.
A Mother’s Song is a sharp and deeply-felt exploration of several women connected at different points in time by one ancestral tree (and the songs passed down through it), gazing into the future of motherhood in all its implications.
Sarah (Chloe Howard) sets off the tale as she begins a new chapter of her life, moving into a new house with her partner, Alix (Sandra Gidlof). Trying to brush aside the grief from her mother’s death, she ignores her brothers calls, and the sealed box of tapes and family artefacts in the corner.
Meanwhile, Anna (Ingrid Gräsbeck) many generations past, finds herself unexpectedly pregnant by a transient fling, and decides to keep the child, whilst Cait (Sally Swanson) finds herself unable to accept her own pregnancy, despite her once happy marriage to the pastor (Jacob Bedford). In the even more distant past, Aunt Betty (Ziare Paul-Emile) comforts the children with songs handed down from her own mother.
It is as refreshing as it is heartbreaking to see Cait’s story in particular given the weight it deserves, and Swanson handles the nuance of Cait’s plight with a visceral commitment and powerful presence. It echoes the modern-day struggle, Gidlof doing a skilfully understated job as Alix tries to keep the inevitable consequence of her deal-breaker at bay.
Howard is also exemplary in her portrayal of Sarah, a delicate demeanour masking the grief-powered fire of self-comprehension growing stronger throughout.
Finn Anderson’s creation is rare in that it allows its folk music to be more than pretty. It’s percussive, visceral, and passionate, and draws on the history of the music – Scottish, Irish, Appalachian and beyond, for its power.
The ensemble rallies together, onstage at all times, often with a muscular intensity that exudes the claustrophobia surrounding the women and their choices, and it’s a formidable effect.
Though it’s a moving production, it does feel like there’s still room in the show for more specificity of character across the board, to save being too defined by their narrative significance, and there are certainly some individual struggles accent-wise, but this is an important show which deserves to be developed further.
Aura Simon
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