With spectacular theatricality, an excellent cast, a dynamic live band and a series of show-stopping, heart-wrenching country songs, Wild Rose is a triumph of emotive and entertaining musical theatre. Telling the story of a Glaswegian single mother who dreams of Nashville success and glamour but is grounded by her criminal past and the duties of parenthood, Nicole Taylor’s stage adaptation of the 2018 film boasts a dazzling dramaturgy from director John Tiffany and achieves a Broadway-style slickness and immediacy.

Filled with great performances (Dawn Sievewright wonderfully captures the heroine’s passion and pathos) and bustling line-dance inflected choreography, the production races towards its bitter-sweet finale, avoiding the plot’s deeper social and political implications. Many of the characters are underwritten, and the relationship between Rose-Lynn and her employer Susannah (the superb Janet Kumah) hints at a critique of inequality that is not pursued. 

The narrative lurches between manufactured crises and opportunities without allowing for character development or even consistency: there is an episodic feel to the second act, as Rose-Lynn experiences both disaster and surprise revelations. When her mother (a brilliantly subtle performance from Blythe Duff) offers Rose-Lynn both the respect she craves and the money to go to Nashville, it has the sense of unearned redemption. The production’s success lies in its lively celebration of a theatricalised working-class resilience and ambition through a great soundtrack and a constantly fluctuating emotional intensity: tragedy and optimism, sentimentality and pity, anxiety and joy. all expressed through the versatility of country music. 

Wild Rose, Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, until Saturday 19 April.