The Ballad of Johnny and June – Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

Book: Des McAnuff and Robert Cary

Director: Des McAnuff

Des McAnuff, the Tony and Olivier Award winning director best known for Jersey Boys and Ain’t Too Proud, is no stranger to the jukebox musical, and The Ballad of Johnny and June bears his fingerprints from the first scene. The creative burden of any jukebox musical falls heavily on the book writer, who must turn familiar songs into a coherent dramatic structure rather than a concert with dialogue. As co-writer and director here, McAnuff attempts to do exactly that with the life story of country music’s most famous couple.

As its title suggests, The Ballad of Johnny and June follows Johnny Cash (Christopher Ryan Grant) and June Carter Cash (Christina Bianco) through the eyes of their son, John Carter Cash (Ryan O’Donnell), who narrates the show from the centre. For those familiar with McAnuff’s earlier work, the debt to Jersey Boys is clear: a narrator placed at the heart of the myth, guiding the audience between public legend and private history.

In theory, this is a promising frame. It attempts to transform the larger than life legend of Johnny Cash into something more intimate and personal. Yet the device does not create the same complexity that made Jersey Boys so effective. There, the four season framework allowed personal truth to be created, challenged and recreated through competing perspectives. In The Ballad, John Carter Cash’s narration does not add enough nuance to the story of drugs, mental health and marriage, themes that are hardly uncommon in stories about stars of that era.

Instead, John Carter’s role feels functional rather than revelatory. He rushes the audience from one life event to another, as though the show is anxious to cover everything before time runs out. Rather than allowing memory to complicate the story, the narration becomes connective tissue between biographical milestones, weakening the emotional impact of the material.

McAnuff also repeats another element of Jersey Boys: the use of songs as dramatic engines. In Jersey Boys, songs are not simply inserted because they are famous. They push the story forward, revealing ambition, conflict, success and fracture. The Ballad tries to do something similar, with some numbers performed within the world of the story and others used to advance the narrative. Yet many feel cut short and hurried. Even potentially moving scenes, including a funeral that should land with real weight, pass by before the production allows them to breathe.

This is the cost of McAnuff’s signature style: fast changing scenes, quick transitions, projection and lighting driving the story forward at the pace of popular music itself. In his best work, this energy is a virtue. Here, squeezing an entire lifetime into two and a half hours produces something closer to a Wikipedia entry than a biography. The show catalogues their lives without quite inhabiting them: too many events, not enough people.

The imbalance is most damaging in its treatment of June Carter Cash. Despite Bianco’s committed performance and the show’s apparent intention to give June more space, the narrative leans too heavily towards Johnny. June’s life before marriage is reduced almost entirely to her Carter name, while Johnny is at least afforded some formative moments that explain who he became. June’s inner life, her ambitions, her contradictions, her world outside the marriage, although hinted, deserves more spotlight. As a result, the show never quite escapes the familiar myth of Johnny Cash as the troubled genius redeemed by love, with June as its instrument rather than its equal.

The cast does its best to push past these limitations. Grant captures the weight, charisma and instability associated with Johnny Cash without reducing him to impersonation, while Bianco gives June warmth, wit and resilience. Their performances suggest a more emotionally complicated musical than the book allows.

The Ballad of Johnny and June has the talent on stage to be something memorable. What it lacks is the patience to let its characters arrive.

Runs until 2 May 2026 | Image: Pamela Raith