Wild Rose, the award-winning movie about a Glasgow country singer, is to be turned into a musical. Writer Nicole Taylor is adapting her 2018 screenplay and working with John Tiffany, the director of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. The show will begin at the Royal Lyceum theatre in Edinburgh in March 2025, with further dates expected to be announced.
Taylor adapted the recent Netflix hit One Day , and her other small-screen credits include Three Girls, The Nest and The C Word. She said she always believed in the dramatic potential of Wild Rose: “I held on to the rights, even though as a first-time writer I had no negotiating position and I’d never written a word for theatre. I knew it would take theatrical form at some point.
” Starring Jessie Buckley, Julie Walters and Sophie Okonedo, the film tells the story of Rose-Lynn Harlan, a former prisoner and single mum whose sights are set on Nashville stardom. Working as a cleaner by day, she fronts a country band by night, but her dreams of fame are tempered by the reality of caring for her two young children. “The dramatic question feels as enduring as ever,” said Taylor.
“That is: once you are a mum, what are you allowed to want? And if you’ve got talent, is that a trump card?” Tiffany, who directed the musical Once and the National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch, said Taylor’s film was perfect for the stage: “It’s a gorgeous mixture of a truthful, engaging story and the beautiful genre of country mu.
