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Windblown

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh 

Five stars

 

The seasons have shifted since Karine Polwart’s multi media elegy to a 200 year old Sabal palm tree about to be felled in Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Garden first blew in to the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Back then, in the heat of such a turbulent backdrop, Polwart’s elegant mix of storytelling and song stood out enough to be declared a masterpiece. Eight months on, Polwart’s meticulously realised immersive song cycle has blossomed enough for a countrywide tour that begins at the Lyceum, where an early workshop of the show was presented. 

 

From the moment Pippa Murphy’s environmental soundscape rattles with the wind, this homecoming of sorts remains a monument to the power of the natural world and the glorious constructions that grow from it. As the tree is plucked from the wild, taken across oceans to foreign lands and kept in glasshouses that can barely contain it, it evolves into a magnificently plumed hybrid it turns out to wearing as a disguise.  

 

Polwart is flanked by a recreation of the tree in Neil Haynes’ expansive set design as she tells her story, both of the tree and the show it inspired. The tree is brought to life by Jamie Wardrop’s startling video design, and illuminated by Lizzie Powell’s lighting. Under the guidance of movement director Janice Parker, Polwart’s gentle sway sees her embody the tree as a profoundly matter of fact observer of the world, watching from its lofty if somewhat cramped vantage point.

  

Musically, Polwart’s elegiac songs are enhanced by Dave Milligan’s richly nuanced piano playing that wraps itself around Polwart’s singing to make a chamber folk pop confection as epic as Paprika Plains era Joni Mitchell. The fusion of all the different art forms on show in a production brought to the stage by the Raw Material organisation continues to be a work of monumental beauty, but it has transcended its roots to become a theatrical evergreen that could weather any storm.


The Herald, May 2nd 2026

 

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