The Ballad of Isobel Gunn – Edinburgh Festival Fringe

The Ballad of Isobel Gunn continues at the Annexe at theSpace @ Symposium Hall until 29 August 2026 (except 16, 23).

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

This is an appealing and entertaining show, brimming with songs. Melanie Gall has created a fascinating bio-musical of an unknown early 19th century woman who lived a very different life to the fictional women we are more familiar with from costume drama and novels.

Isobel Gunn’s life comes across as hard and monotonous, with its few dramatic moments coming when she escapes by disguising herself as John Fubbister and, later, unexpectedly gives birth to a son thousands of miles from her home in Orkney.

Gall lifts this life through considered storytelling which traces a chronological narrative but illuminates it as a bid for freedom thwarted by the social conventions of the time. The song ‘Here I Stand’ is particularly affecting, imagining what Isobel might have written to the brother who left Orkney before her, had she been able to write and known where he was.

As a recovery project it is very worthwhile, but as theatre it is conventional. The show does raise important questions about how past lives are commemorated, or forgotten, and Gall’s show succeeds in its aim of rectifying the omission of Isobel from Stromness history, with Gall herself appearing in character as the investigator uncovering her story. She also re-creates Isobel herself, making the story more accessible as she reflects on how much has changed since that period. Gall attempts to inhabit her own persona as historian on stage but remains a lone voice.

Several voiceovers from actors, including Cameron Stout and James Rich, represent all the other characters, an approach that sometimes works but can otherwise feel overly pared down. As the mysterious witch inspiring Isobel to ‘think ye on the Selkie’ and to ‘leave your stays on the shore’, and as the son James writing a letter, these disembodied voices strike the right note, but otherwise the production might have stronger with a larger cast on stage.

The circumstances of Isobel’s pregnancy are unknown; instead Gall imagines her feelings towards her unborn child, expressed with tenderness in ‘The Babe Born in December’.

There is a full range of well-written and catchy songs to accompany the stages of Gunn’s journey, performed to a backing track. The lack of live musicians perhaps diminishes the folk quality suggested by the title, although the reduced accompaniment also reinforces the isolation at the heart of Gunn’s story.

This interesting and vocally-strong show is well worth a visit if you are a fan of Scottish history. The knitting song provides a link to Gall’s Stitch in Time: A Knitting Cabaret, also running at this year’s Fringe.

Charlotte Purkis