The Guardian 16 March 2025

If you can’t be sentimental in a show about country music, when can you be? The most affecting moments in this big-hearted musical come when tough talking gives way to tenderness. Like the genre itself, Wild Rose is forthright, vibrant and emotionally raw.

Wittily adapted by Nicole Taylor from her 2018 film of the same name and staged with elan by John Tiffany, it is the story of ex-con Rose-Lynn Harlan as she tries to reconcile the need to care for her children with her ambitions to make it as a singer. Believing no country star ever came out of Glasgow, she sets her sights on Nashville. That is, after she has dealt with the cleaning job, ankle tag and night-time curfew. [READ MORE]

By Mark Fisher

MARK FISHER is a freelance theatre critic and feature writer based in Edinburgh and has written about theatre in Scotland since the late-1980s. He is a theatre critic for The Guardian, a former editor of The List magazine and a frequent contributor to the Scotsman and other publications. He is the co-editor of the play anthology Made in Scotland (1995), and the author of The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide (2012) and How to Write About Theatre (2015) – all Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. He is also the editor of The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls and What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book (both Mark Fisher Ltd).