THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
Folk music history meets modern queer identity – who said folk can’t be sexy!
Southwark Playhouse Elephant, 1 Dante Place, London SE11 4RX until March 21, 2026
At one stage Ballad Lines’ lead character says “I don’t see my family tree as one of flesh and blood”, a key observation and an interesting launch pad for a piece which fuses two things you might have thought mutually exclusive – folk music and modern queer identity. But this show, developed at the Macrobert Arts Centre in Stirling, Scotland, and at the American Musical Theatre Project in Chicago, grew in two parallel lines.
The first traces the migration of traditional ballads from Scotland and Ulster to America and how they survived and evolved in the Appalachian Mountains, fusing with other traditions to become blues, jazz, country and bluegrass. The second thematic line explores questions of female agency and women’s ability to have a say over their own bodies and how these questions shifted from one generation to the next.
The plot follows Sarah, a lesbian New Yorker who, after moving into a new apartment with her partner Alix, discovers a box of letters and cassette tapes left to her by her late Aunt Betty, from back home in West Virginia. These recordings unlock a lineage of women, stretching from 17th‑century Scotland to Appalachia, each connected through traditional folk songs passed down through generations. Through the music and a diary Sara gets drawn into the lives of Cait, her 17th century Scottish ancestor, and Jean, a spirited Irish teenager who emigrated from Ulster nearly two centuries later.
Co-created by Scottish singer-songwriter Finn Anderson (Islander, Streets) and acclaimed director Tania Azevedo (But I’m a Cheerleader), it deftly explores themes of family, identity, motherhood, fertility, and inherited trauma, threading together stories of women whose lives were shaped—and sometimes constrained – by the worlds they inhabited. Azevedo’s staging conjures ghosts, memories, and landscapes with economy and imagination, allowing the music to carry the emotional weight.
The tension between Sarah and Alix (Sydney Sainté) over the possibility of having a child themselves becomes a contemporary counterpoint to the struggles of their foremothers. A challenge for the piece though is its sheer narrative sprawl, which occasionally leads to uneven character depth as we are trying to follow so many stories across four time periods. Yna Tresvalles, though, has wonderful passion as Jean and is ably matched by Siân Louise Dowdalls as her feisty sister Shona and while the piece generally avoids crude revisionism there’s a moment when they appear to describe a feminist consciousness long before Betty Friedan.
Anderson’s score is the standout here weaving together new songs with re-imagined traditional Scottish, Irish, and Appalachian ballads, played with great verve by Sally Simpson on violin, Isis Dunthorne on drums, Shonagh Murray on keys and Madeline Salter on guitar. Inevitably the ballads stand out over the often more prosaic modern numbers which often come up short as musical theater numbers in that they merely serve to advance the plot.
Frances McNamee (Girl from the North Country) brings great clarity and emotional heft to the part of Sarah. Act 2 really tests her vocally and she comes up trumps in some great numbers including a heart-rending duet with Sainté, ‘Separate Ways’. Seasoned West End performer Rebecca Trehearn (Olivier winner for Showboat) anchors the piece as Aunt Betty and Kirsty Findlay (Olivier nominee for Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour) is particularly affecting reprising the role Cait, the reluctant clergyman’s wife she first played in 2023 in Scotland.
This production adds to Southwark Playhouse’s impressive tradition of championing innovative new musicals, and seeing it the same week as the new movie The History of Sound one was really struck by the uncanny parallels. In that film an almost forgotten treasure of recordings of traditional American folk songs forms the narrative driver of the plot – a great queer romance between Josh O’Connor and Paul Mescal’s buttoned up characters. Who said folk can’t be sexy!
