Review: Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024 – June Carter Cash: The Woman, Her Music, and Me
Written by Charlene Boyd Directed by Cora Bissett Review by Dominic Corr Summerhall - Demonstration Room: Tickets ★★★★★ Only one person could reunite the Appalachian Mountains with the Scottish Highlands after millions o…
Only one person could reunite the Appalachian Mountains with the Scottish Highlands after millions of years: June Carter Cash. Well, CharleneBoyd, the creator of this show, has embarked on a personal journey that is less about June Carter Cash and more about the making of this show. It's a journey punctuated with rage and a personal edge that is both touching and eye-opening. It offers an insight into Boyd's resilience and the thunderous theatre-making storm they're surely in for, making the audience feel connected and empathetic.
One of the more magnificent and impressive elements of the show is how – even as Boyd's adoration and (let's be honest) fandom for Carter Cash never strays into fan service, always artistically merited, always appreciated. Refraining from a strictly biographical piece on Carter Cash, Boyd instead shapes the story, her story, around her own circumstances, and where the lines cross over, the inventive production slips between the pair as they become one. It's an arresting, charming leading performance from Boyd, which perfectly manifests the secret to good country's three chords and the truth. Boyd's performance is clean, passionate, layered and wholly truthful to the show's origins; emerging from Lockdown, Boyd finds their feet again following a divorce and their mother's guilt.
In no finer hands, the National Theatre of Scotland and Grid Iron piece is staged by Cora Bissett's superb inventiveness and understanding, both of the theatricality of the show and its concert-like openness. The expansive set transforms the Summerhall Demonstration Room into carnival lights, tables, gingham cloths, and, most crucially – music. The space at the rear of the three-piece band, formed of fab co-stars Harry Ward, Ray Aggs, and Amy Duncan, who dip in and out of the story as the various people Boyd and Carter Cash encountered, some famous, some pleasant; others the distressing reflection of the rampant sexism, abuse, and narrow-minded nature prevailing in the industries to this day.
Taking the advice from Carter Cash's daughter, Carlene Caret, that anyone could write a new jukebox take on her mother's life, Boyd instead takes audiences step-by-step along the journey it took to get to this point. And what a charming one it is. The parallels between June Carter Cash and Boyd may not initially have been imaginable, but by the conclusion of this celebratory new show, you couldn't help but see the connection between two enormously talented women – and the determination now to stand in that ring of fire without being burned. Country songs are written from the heart and gut before the head. Far from a jab, it's some of the most influential and honest music out there – and it's the same qualities in Boyd's writing with her forthright and raw one-woman play.
Editor for Corr Blimey, and a freelance critic for Scottish publications, Dominic has been writing freelance for several established and respected publications such as BBC Radio Scotland, The List, The Skinny, Edinburgh Festival Magazine, The Reviews Hub, In Their Own League, and The Wee Review. As of 2023, he is a member of the Critic's Award for Theatre Scotland(CATS) and a member of the UK Film Critics.
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