Book: Finn Anderson and Tania Azevedo
Music and Lyrics: Finn Anderson
Director: Tania Azevedo
Appalachian folk music, we are told in new musical Ballad Lines, grew from an amalgam of sources – ballads from the British Isles, rhythms from Africa via enslaved people, and more – before passing on that inheritance to styles from bluegrass to rock’n’roll.
It is the first of those sources, the storytelling ballads that came on the waves with immigrants from Scotland and Ireland, that Finn Anderson and Tania Azevedo’s new musical focuses upon. In modern-day New York, Frances McNamee’s Sarah unpacks a box of cassette tapes left to her by her late aunt Betty, which contains stories about their ancestral line going back to Jacobean Scotland.
As Sarah listens to the tapes, we are introduced, via Betty’s narration, first to Cait (Kirsty Findlay), a Scottish pastor’s wife in the 1600s, who becomes pregnant but does not want the baby, and then to her descendant five generations later. Yna Tresvalles’s Jean, now living in Ulster within a strong Scottish Presbyterian community in what we now know as Northern Ireland’s County Derry-Londonderry, is pregnant also, a result of a one-night stand with a sailor. She plans to emigrate to America and start a new life in Boston. Both women find themselves trapped until they have enough money to achieve their goals: Cait so she can pay the village wise woman for the herbs that will induce a miscarriage, Jean so she can afford the passage to the New World.
As the stories unfold, Sarah battles with her own ideas of motherhood – a situation that she and her partner, Sydney Sainté’s Alix, had never contemplated – and with her complicated relationship with her aunt Betty (Rebecca Treheran), who brought her and her brother up but never truly accepted Sarah’s life as a lesbian.
That’s a whole lot of plot for a new musical, but although the story jumps between the multiple strands at a fair lick, the storytelling generally keeps everything clear. The opening moments when everything is being set out are perhaps a little more muddled than they could be, and the thumping folk music (the four-piece band supplemented by boot-stomping and clapping from the entire ensemble) drowns out some vital exposition. Soon enough, though, the entire stall is set out.
Finn Anderson’s music certainly feels authentically folksy throughout. And although the show’s title correctly suggests a focus on ballads, a song type our modern tastes generally consider to be on the slower side, these folk tunes are ballads more by the virtue of their storytelling content than their tempo.
What it does mean is that, at least in Act I, there’s not always as much variation in song style as one would hope for. Nor does Trehearn have much to do, besides walk on and narrate. We do get some well-observed relationship moments between McNamee and Sainté, whose lives are fleshed out more than the slivers we get of Sarah’s ancestors.
Throughout, the music is of a strong quality, as musical director Shonagh Murray leads a band through Anderson’s score. In Act II, we also get a better sense of the kind of music Appalachian folk has inspired. The strains on Sarah and Alix’s relationship become underpinned by a more contemporary sound, providing a welcome contrast to what has come before. We also finally get some meaty work for Trehearn, with a flashback scene that shows how Betty and Sarah’s relationship broke down.
These parallel tales of the relationship between mothers and pregnancy (a previous iteration of this musical was called A Mother’s Song) and, to a lesser extent, the maternal bond between Betty and her niece, echo the musical’s main theme of passing down stories through the generations. The sociopolitical implications of Anderson and Azevedo’s message, which at times seems to place Alix’s desire to not have children as something to reject, may be a little muddier than the writers hope.
Despite that, Ballad Lines is a strong folk musical that delivers stirring melodies and strong emotional connections. It offers a refreshing take on the pressures women face to conceive and become mothers, all with a stirring tempo. It also provides an entertaining reinforcement of the musical lineage from British folk to American folk, and from there to rock and beyond.
Runs until 21 March 2026
