From The Scotsman

April 1st 2009

HOMECOMING YEAR; yet while the organisers seem happy to use cheesy tourist imagery of Robert Burns on their advertising material, not much cash has been forthcoming, so far, for artists and promoters who actually want to engage with the radical substance of the poet’s work. Rowan Tree Theatre’s The Lasses O is a case in point, a 21st century re-examination of Burns’s life and song now touring the Borders on a slender shoestring of local support; yet so passionately inventive and well-made that on Saturday night in Melrose, some of the audience were moved to a standing ovation.

The play, by poet and dramatist Janet Paisley, takes the form of four monologues spoken by women in Burns’s life, each one shaped around a particular Burns song. But these women are not the wives and lovers you might expect. Instead, we meet the midwife at Burns’s birth, the old nurse who helps raise him, the shapely mother-in-law riven with lust for the comely young poet, and the faithful young Dumfries neighbour, Jessie Lewars, who helped Burns and his wife through the terrible final months of his life.

It’s a powerful formula for a new perspective on Burns, presented through a passionate and beautifully-pitched performance from Gerda Stevenson, and accompanied by the memorably wild and interesting music of cellist Seylan Baxter, harpist Rachel Newton, and flautist Lillias Kinsman-Blake. And what emerges, in John Bett’s production, is one of the most subtly feminist shows I’ve seen in a while; one in which the desire, the creativity, the nurturing energy and the tradition-bearing power of women take a memorable leading role, even as they celebrate the life and song of a rare man who, instead of fearing the sensual power of women, matched it with his own, and allowed it to soar free

Joyce MacMillan

From The Times

March 23rd 2009

Robert Burns loved the lasses and the lasses loved him. There are those who dismiss his amours as no better than those of any other randy farm-hand. But surely any man who writes a the refrain, “The sweetest hours that e'er I spend are spent amang the lasses, O”, has got a bit farther than just getting his leg over.

That refrain, and those amours, give Janet Paisley's play both its title and its central theme. In this year of celebrations for Burns's 250th anniversary, the man himself is absent. Rather we see him through the eyes and recollections of four women - and not the ones you might expect such as Clarinda or Jean Armour.

Instead there is the midwife who brings him into the world, famously in the middle of a storm. There is Bessie, his mother's best friend, who never tires of telling the small boy tall stories of the Devil himself, sowing seeds that will grow in to the great tale of Tam o'Shanter among others.

There is Jean Armour's mother, Mary, characterised as an 18th century desperate housewife far more smitten with Burns than her good-time-girl daughter. And finally there is Jessie, a close friend and neighbour of Jean and Robert who witnesses his tragically early death.

The result, skilfully written, subtly directed by John Bett for the Rowan Tree company, performed with terrific commitment and no little virtuosity by Gerda Stevenson, and accompanied by three young (and female, naturally) musicians, is about as neat a small-scale show about Burns as you could ask for.

It is original, amusing - the moment where the pregnant Mrs Burns senior, who is also the cellist, first proudly strokes the belly of the instrument and then brings forth a miniature fiddle, is typical of the sly wit - thoughtful and celebratory, even for Jean Armour's mother who, by definition, never gets what she wants. And, while there's a certain amount of invention, the basic history is sound too.

On my first visit there since it opened in 2007, let me add my voice to the chorus of praise for the Heart of Hawick, an arts, social and commercial centre, and clearly a buzzing, happening place.

Robert Dawson Scott

From The Southern Reporter

April 2, 2009

Oh, the Lasses were a hit

THE Lasses, O, a new production from Rowan Tree – always a treat for Borders theatre-goers – was performed at The Wynd Theatre in Melrose on Saturday night and the audience was, indeed, spellbound.

Burns was brought to us as a background figure, an emotional catalyst for four women on whom his life had a powerful influence.

These women were themselves only peripheral to the life of Burns as most of us know it: Agnes McLure brought him into the world on a wild and stormy night (plenty of symbolism there), the storyteller Betty Davidson dragged the reluctant child from his warm bed to get to school, Mary Smith, Jean Armour's mother, secretly lusted after the magnetic young man who was begetting children on her daughter, and young neighbour Jessie Lewars nursed him in his final illness and brought his last child into the world as he was carried to the churchyard. All the women had familiar contemporary resonances, we could tap into their lives in these vignettes and relate to the problems on hand although, thankfully, the shrieking de'il in the kirkyard belongs to a simpler age.

Gerda Stevenson played all four women in a magisterial performance – her Scots perfect, her evocation of Janet Paisley's characters precise and immediate.
The musicians, Seylan Baxter, Lillias Kinsman-Blake and Rachel Newton, were themselves an integral part of the stories, their exciting music and singing like a Greek chorus, helping to move the action along and provide imaginative and witty sound effects – it's hard to forget the groaning notes of the cello as the birth pains of Burns' mother.
The fifth monologue from Janet Paisley's original play sadly had to be dropped from the programme, but those remaining offered us an evening's entertainment of satisfactory length and balanced personalities.

The gauzy screens of the stage set were magical and, as always with Rowan Tree, the props themselves minimal, a shawl becoming a babe in arms, a chair not only a chair but an altar to pray at.

This is what we like so much about Rowan Tree, uncluttered sets leaving our imaginations free to fill in the details.