Nicole Taylor remembers the ‘big bang’ moment when her love of country music grew into a full-blown obsession. ‘Country music has been everything to me since I was about 12,’ says the Scottish screenwriter. ‘Growing up I remember my dad would put on Patsy Cline or Brenda Lee tapes in the car. I was up late one night and the Country Music Association Awards were on TV. Mary Chapin Carpenter was singing “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her” and that song just did something to me. It’s about a woman not satisfied in her marriage. It was like an entire movie, someone’s whole life story in three minutes. Yesterday I listened to a beautiful country song called “Casseroles” about grief, or another amazing one, “Bottle By My Bed”, about infertility. There is a country song for every human emotion and experience. The storytelling is phenomenal. Country music is so direct, so unpretentious; that’s what I love about it.’

Twenty years after her Mary Chapin Carpenter epiphany, when Taylor was just starting out as a screenwriter, her passion project was commissioned: the film script for Wild Rose. Irish actress Jessie Buckley went on to star as Rose-Lynn Harlan, a young Glaswegian mum fresh out of jail and obsessed with making it to Nashville as a country singer. Brummie legend Julie Walters played her sceptical mother, fed up of hearing about her daughter’s pipe dreams. That 2018 film won three Scottish BAFTAs including Best Writer for Taylor. The film’s soundtrack went to number one in the UK Country Albums Chart and its grand-finale moment is the song ‘Glasgow (No Place Like Home)’, co-written by Oscar-winning Hollywood star Mary Steenburgen. That song has since become a pub karaoke classic, often accompanied by floods of tears. 

‘I love that “Glasgow” has become this unofficial anthem,’ beams Taylor. ‘Also, a lot of Glaswegian women have come up to me and said “my mince is your mince”’, she adds, referring to a low-key yet potent scene in the film where Rose-Lynn tells her mum their mince and tattie recipes are indistinguishable. ‘It’s basically Glaswegian for “I love you” but they are too emotionally repressed to say it. I love that people love that line.’

Now, a brand-new musical based on the film is coming to the Lyceum in Edinburgh. Tickets flew out the box office so fast they had to add another fortnight of shows to meet demand. ‘It’s cheesy to say, but I still have the air of a competition winner about me,’ Taylor admits with a laugh. She’s backstage at the Lyceum on a break from rehearsals, visibly buzzing. It’s the first time she has written for theatre and while she says she doesn’t always ‘know the grammar’ (‘I mean, how do I do a close-up?’ she muses), she’s enjoying learning a new process. 

‘I just remember burning with this idea all those years ago; this was a time long before Taylor Swift, when country music was still so nerdy and no one was interested. From the get-go I wanted it to be a film, and I also knew I wanted it to become a stage play.’ Unlike TV (Taylor wrote Three Girls for the BBC, the harrowing, BAFTA-winning true story of a Rochdale sex-abuse ring, and was lead writer on Netflix smash One Day), theatre allows for live tweaks from the writer. ‘I feel electrified by the whole process. It’s not like being stuck at home with a scene; now I can workshop lines with the actors. I can hear them on stage making the lines their own. It’s a very dynamic process.’

Glasgow actor Dawn Sievewright will be playing Rose-Lynn while Blythe Duff takes on the role of her mother, Marion. As part of her preparations, Sievewright has been working her way through a seven-and-a-half-hour playlist of country songs shared by Taylor. ‘I realise sending Dawn that was probably not a socially acceptable thing to do,’ winces Taylor. ‘Yeah, Nicole is an incredible country fan!’ says Sievewright. ‘I think her script really gets that across. It’s like Rose-Lynn says, “it gets whatever’s in there out” [she grabs her heart]. I think that’s why country music is so close to Scottish people’s hearts. We feel things greatly, whether that’s deep sadness, ecstasy, revenge, anger, heartbreak; just sit in a pub on a Saturday night in Glasgow city centre and that’s what you’ll hear.’

Sievewright grew up in Bishopbriggs before moving to London aged 17. She made her West End debut in the Legally Blonde musical and has since appeared onstage in National Theatre Of Scotland’s Our Ladies Of Perpetual Succour and Glasgow Girls by Cora Bissett. You may also recognise her from TV stints in BBC’s Shetland and Disney+’s Star Wars: Andor. Immediately prior to Wild Rose rehearsals starting in Edinburgh, Sievewright had been in London playing Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Royal Shakespeare Company. While she may have wielded a shotgun menacingly in Shetland, she’ll be acting fierce in an altogether different way for Taylor’s adaptation.

‘I love learning all the time, pushing myself. But also, musical theatre is where I started out, so going back to it is a bit like slipping on an old familiar jumper.’ Sievewright comes from a musical family; her mum is a ballroom and Latin dancer, and her dad runs an events company. ‘We always had the stereo blaring out music. I remember The Chicks being a massive part of my childhood, my auntie loved Shania Twain, and I remember singing LeAnn Rimes at karaoke when I was about 12. There was blues, rock’n’roll, Jools Holland... then I was into Britney Spears, Blue, Foy Vance; a real mix. But meeting Nicole and [Wild Rose director] John Tiffany, my eyes have really been opened to the mind-blowing spectrum of country music. It has such breadth and reaches so many different people. I went to a Chris Stapleton show with John at the Hydro: there were lassies in their 20s dripping in sequins and an 82-year-old man dancing in a leather waistcoat. They were all going crazy!’

The musical features an eight-piece band onstage throughout, playing country classics from Dolly Parton and Lynn Anderson, as well as newer tracks by Carrie Underwood and Caitlyn Smith. ‘I open with “Country Girl” by Primal Scream which is a real big kicker, and I do “Tacoma” later, which is a beautiful, belty, ballady song. As a performer, that one is hard to sing and it gives me butterflies. But “Glasgow” at the end... I won’t lie: that one is genuinely hard to sing without crying. Lots of rehearsing will help. We might need emotional-support animals backstage.’

If the original film hit everyone right in the feels, Taylor is hoping her adaptation for the stage will put ‘everyone through the wringer. I want packs of women coming along! I just want it to be such an amazing, uplifting night out. Scottish women and country music: that’s a real thing. It’s why I spent most Saturday nights as a teenager at the Grand Ole Opry. I want to get across some of that passion for the music.’

Wild Rose, Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, Thursday 6 March–Saturday 19 April; main picture: Matt Crockett.