Summerhall
Five stars
Charlene Boyd didn’t so much discover country music for herself as be spoon-fed it from the cradle. Several decades on from watching her mother sing in a wedding band, and with a break up, two kids and an empty high rise for company, she has clearly enough living behind her to make up a country song to call her own.
Or, in this case, a play, as Boyd pays homage to country legend June Carter Cash after finding a signed copy of her autobiography in a charity shop. This leads her on a personal pilgrimage to discover the roots of Carter Cash’s little heralded but crucial role in a scene dominated by cowboys, with women like June - and Charlene - left on the sidelines. Boyd also overcomes her imposter syndrome to point up the parallels with her own life as a working class woman trying to make her way in a man’s world.
Boyd tells it how it is as she navigates the speakeasy cabaret table set up of Cora Bissett’s production for the National Theatre of Scotland and Grid Iron Theatre Company. Boyd unravels her own back pages in moving and unflinching fashion, while her quest to get to the heart of Carter Cash reveals them as kindred spirits across continents. With markers of the world that exists from Glasgow to the Appalachians on Shona Reppe’s set, the musical trio of Ray Aggs, Amy Duncan and Harry Weeks provide some good time back up.
The fearless determination with which Boyd has embarked on such a labour of love becomes the play’s heart in a hard living testament to country music’s everyday epics of ordinary lives. Her dogged pursuit for truth becomes a joyful celebration of two women and a whole lot more who saddled up and did things their way. Yee-haw to that.
The Herald, August 9th 2024
Ends
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