A Mother’s Song review

The story centres on Sarah, a West Virginia-born student who has just bought a bohemian Brooklyn flat with her partner Alix. During the moving-in process, she comes across a box full of cassette tapes left to her by her late aunt, and opens a window on to the women who came before her: a Presbyterian preacher’s wife in 17th-century Scotland and an 18th-century Ulster Scots teenager.

Their stories, and those of Sarah and her aunt, interlace and overlap over the course of two-and-a-half exquisite hours. The same themes – unexpected pregnancy, uncertain futures, impossible situations – recur, as do the songs. Scottish ballads such as The Fower Maries and Handsome Molly are skilfully repurposed and shot through poppier, peppier numbers by Anderson, and it is all performed with earnest excellence by a four-strong band and seven-strong ensemble.

Remember the name Bethany Tennick: she is a rising star of Scottish theatre and delivers a powerhouse performance as Sarah, simultaneously curious and cautious about exploring her ancestry, with an astonishing voice that is ethereal yet earthy. Tinashe Warikandwa is superb, too, as Alix, Sarah’s frustratingly reasonable and rational same-sex partner.

Azevedo stages the intertwining tales with imagination and elegance on designer Emma Bailey’s set – two rolling cages that variously serve as Scottish cottages, transatlantic steamers and New York apartments. This work has been six years in the making and it shows: there is a compelling cohesiveness to everything. Is it the next great Scottish musical? Possibly. Probably. This is certainly not the last we will see of it.