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Ballad Lines | Southwark Playhouse Elephant | ★★★☆☆
A Jacobean vicar’s wife, a pregnant Presbyterian teen and a 21st-century New York lesbian walk into a bar – this isn’t a joke, just the setup for new musical Ballad Lines. Co-written by Finn Anderson and Tania Azevedo, Ballad Lines dives into the lives of Cait, Jean and Sarah, three women from the same blood line but very different times – 17th-century Scotland, 18th-century Ireland and 21st-century America – connected by heritage, womanhood but, more importantly, the power of song, with the score blending Scottish, Irish and Appalachian folk ballads.
Bringing them together structurally in the show is a box of tape recordings, left to Sarah, our millennial leading lady, by her estranged aunt.
If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it is a lot. Choosing to weave three storylines together is one thing, but choosing to place all three in different countries and centuries is quite another, and this show does end up faltering under the sheer scale of its own ambition.
That’s not to say there isn’t a lot to like though. The cast, for one thing, are near faultless, especially vocally, while the main theme – female bodily autonomy – is eerily pertinent. Kirsty Findlay’s performance as Cait, a 1600s Scotswoman desperate to abort her pregnancy, is particularly heartwrenching, while Yna Tresvalles and Siân Louise Dowdalls are a breath of fresh air as spirited Irish sisters Jean and Shona setting out to cross the Atlantic. The score too, which has hints of Once, Come From Away and Hadestown about it, has some real moments of power (The Water Deep, Red Red River).
A show with a lot of ambition
The span of the show, however, leaves yawning gaps. This is a show about connectivity, yet it jumps between hundreds of years at what feels like whim, with few markers for the audience. Had I not read the press material, I would have been at a loss at what centuries we were constantly switching between, while the relatively small stage presumably necessitates the use of (intentionally?) anachronistic props (a Le Creuset in Carolean Scotland) and muddled costuming (Jean’s polyester long sleeve under her corset gives a cool Victoriana-punk vibe, though she’s neither in the Victorian or punk era).
With a lot of story to get through, some of the characters are left feeling more like tropes. Betty, speaking to her niece Sarah from the tapes with arm-swinging aphorisms of the likes of “a ballad ain’t worth singing if it ain’t true to life”, is particularly guilty as an All-American Aunt.
Meanwhile, the gravity of the ancestors’ stories leave Sarah’s troubles looking a little pale in comparison. Where her ancestors wait for treacherous boat crossings, Sarah’s conflict centres around an apparently all-consuming housewarming party. The contrast may be the point, but it nonetheless makes Sarah’s definitely real problems feel a little shallow. Information about Sarah’s own family problems are drip-fed, and whatever happened to her actual parents (it’s implied she was largely raised by Aunt Betty though it’s not entirely clear) is not even mentioned, which, in a musical all about motherhood, feels like quite the omission.
That all said, there is something about this show that is affecting. The first act is in need of speeding up, but it rapidly gains pace in the second half and hits a real crescendo. I couldn’t help but think it needs something like the opener of Hamilton, in which the audience is given all the exposition in a single song. For a story as expansive as this, I think a similar Shakespearean-type prologue could be helpful, so as to get to the action more quickly. Likewise, this could be the kind of show that really benefits from scale. With a few set pieces and the potential for big, gorgeous ensemble numbers, Ballad Lines could be a hit in waiting. In the meantime though, it could benefit from some refinement.
Ballad Lines is playing at the Southwark Playhouse until 21 March
