Just to say to start with, that I don’t usually do dedications on here but as I was thinking about my late maternal Grandma Margaret with this ‘Sunshine on Leith’ post, I’d like to dedicate it to her as she loved musicals and grew up in Edinburgh and it would have been her birthday this week.
This next post is about the jukebox musical ‘Sunshine on Leith’, which features songs by the much loved Scottish band The Proclaimers, including ‘Let’s get married’, ‘I’m on my way’ and some huge hits like ‘I’m gonna be (500 miles)’, ‘Letter to America’ and the eponymous ‘Sunshine on Leith’. Like many others, I mainly know the musical from the 2013 film*, which features The Proclaimers in a brief cameo, but the show actually started life as a stage musical (created by Stephen Greenhorn, who also adapted it for the big screen) and was first performed at the Dundee Rep in 2007. My Dad and I actually went to see a production of 'Sunshine in Leith' in August 2016, when I was sixteen, at the Spiegel Tent put on by Captivate Theatre as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. This is one of the only times that I’ve been to the theatre with just my Dad (often it’s Mum or friends or Grandmas). I don’t remember all the details of the day but the show was really well done and everyone in it was super talented. There were also quite a few different stages of the journey to get to the tent, as we went in our electric car, left it charging on the outskirts of Edinburgh and rode the tram into the centre (maybe my first time on that particular line).
There are a lot of good things about ‘Sunshine on Leith’ as a musical and as a jukebox musical (and this paragraph contains spoilers!). For instance, I personally find that compared to quite a lot of other jukebox musicals, it’s a bit less cheesy and isn’t formulaic, as the songs help further the plot effectively as well as conveying powerful emotions and being entertaining. The characters are, for the most part, quite well developed and generally feel like actual people that you could realistically meet. Also, there’s a bit of something for everyone, as there are stories about friendship, work and war along with the love stories but the romantic subplots are unique, interesting stories that don’t all have the Hollywood romantic ending that people often expect. One of the main couples, for example, is Jean (played by Jane Horrocks in the movie) and Rab (played by Peter Mullan who is in one of my favourite TV shows, the wonderful BBC show ‘Mum’). Rab and Jean have been married for a long time and have two grown-up children. In the story Jean starts to wonder if the reason they’ve been together so long is genuine happiness or if it’s partly out of convenience or fear. As they celebrate a significant anniversary, a big secret is revealed that could potentially cause problems for their marriage as Jean discovers that shortly after their wedding, Rab had a one-night stand with an ex-girlfriend. One of the biggest differences between the film and the stage musical is that in the movie, unbeknownst to him, Rab’s infidelity resulted in his ex-girlfriend becoming pregnant with his daughter, whereas in the stage musical, Jean was pregnant when he cheated and he doesn’t have children with anyone else. In the film, Rab doesn’t find out that he has another daughter until he goes to her mother’s funeral.
With the younger generation, both Rab and Jean’s daughter and son have interesting love stories of their own. For instance, their daughter, Liz, who along with her friend and eventual sister-in-law, Yvonne, is a nurse and therefore very much a key worker, has an on-off relationship with her brother’s friend, Ally. It soon becomes clear that while Liz and Ally like each other, they have different ideas about how their relationship is going and how they see each other. For instance, Ally’s a soldier like Liz’s brother and, whilst she is fond of him, she’s not thinking about settling down with him or anyone else at this point in her life. However, after they sing ‘Make my heart fly’, Ally misinterprets the situation and decides to propose, which is definitely not what she was expecting, as she was wanting to move to Florida for work. Ally does not take it well when she turns him down and while some stories would have a more traditionally romantic ending of having them reconcile in the final act, it’s actually quite a nice, welcome change that they don’t get back together. Instead, Liz, who’s always wanted to travel and see more of the world, actually gets to move and focus on her job and get some new experiences, which certainly at that stage of her life was more important to her than romance.
Meanwhile, Liz’s English friend, Yvonne, who is a lot more interested in romance, starts dating Liz’s brother, Davy, also a soldier. Some of their conflict comes down to the fact that Davy doesn’t love the idea of dating someone from England and Yvonne had a bad experience with her Scottish ex-boyfriend. Also, it looks pretty bad when Yvonne catches Davy in a fight and for a minute, he looks as if he might hurt her, likewise she's confused when he doesn’t support her or stand by her when she asks if he would go to England with her if she had to go back for her family. Whether you like the two of them together or not, it can’t be denied that their version of ‘Misty blue’ is really heartwarming, and that their version of ‘I met you’ kinda slaps (they’re pretty much all good songs in this show, tbh). However, they end up working it out and having a more typical romcom ‘run through the airport’ (or train station, in their case) moment at the end to reveal their true feelings and reconcile with a kiss and a musical number.
‘Sunshine on Leith’ tugs on your heartstrings in many ways multiple times. There are the more tense scenes, when the couples are full of angst or in conflict, there are the more romantic, moving scenes and there are the hospital scenes where everyone visits Rab, who has had a heart attack which brings everyone together and results (in the film) in Jean forgiving him and getting in touch with his other daughter so that they can have a relationship, which Jean did not approve of previously. In a poignant scene when she visits him in hospital, we get a lovely, slow but powerful rendition of ‘Sunshine on Leith’ from Jean and whether or not you like the music or the story, it sure is emotional, moving stuff.
As I’ve lived in Scotland for so long, I’ve come to notice that The Proclaimers’ music is particularly loved and celebrated here, as their songs have become unofficial national anthems and are played at almost every big event and celebration all over Scotland. With the lockdown restrictions starting to ease in Scotland this week, we’ll hopefully be able to celebrate things together again soon and it will certainly be nice to visit Edinburgh again. I’ve always loved going to this city and with not being able to leave our local area for months, even places that aren’t very far away have started to feel worlds away or like distant far-off lands in stories.
*Also, a little disclaimer - I started writing this post before I read that Kevin Guthrie (who plays Ally in the film) had recently been found guilty of sexual assault. I won’t mention him in this post, other than this.
