PAT NEIL, THE SOUTHERN REPORTER

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.
The director, John Bett, and the production team are to be congratulated on one of their finest entertainments.

© Copyright 2011 by Rowan Tree Theatre Company