Telling the story of Bonnie Mackay, a young girl who grows up with her papa, Common Tongue is a Scots language solo show which sparkles throughout. Standing in a tartan-draped set, framed with microphones on stands, Olivia Caw as Bonnie takes us through her life, where she discovers that the way that she speaks identifies not only how she feels, but also how others will perceive her.Â
Caw narrates and portrays Bonnie beautifully as we go from primary school, through meeting her boyfriend’s family for the first time, and then going off to America to tell an assembled throng that they’re doing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ wrong at a New Year’s celebration in New York.Â
Fraser Scott’s script skilfully opens up Bonnie’s character as she discovers herself, her voice, and how she translates her thoughts and emotions into ways that people can understand her. Weaving familiar stories from working-class Scottish households and exploring how people perceive our enthusiasm – often as anger – it gives Caw the perfect platform to show that her speech is far from slovenly, but is delightfully filled with every emotion.
Scott doesn’t just deliver something we recognise from family events, like Hogmanay parties, but has Bonnie trying to achieve by keeping who she is central to who she wants to become. This is a young girl with little compromise but plenty of spirit.
What is most impressive is Caw’s performance. It is clear that there is a connection and respect between the two – Bonnie as a character and Caw as her representative onstage. Caw draws on herself to show the side eyes, the expressions, the facial expressions that say more than words can manage. These expressions are poised and delivered in perfect comic timing but also they open up more of her personality and character. It is a virtuoso performance.
This allows her to reach out beyond the stage and draw the audience into some seated interaction, which works really well. When Bonnie loses the one person she is closest to, there was a genuinely distraught murmuring behind me that our fictional character was about to feel the loss of her biggest fictional influence: a very real sigh, and distraught, real-world ‘aw naw’.
The case for Scots language, a language which when whispered can be acutely heard and disparaged but when shouted is often ignored, is delivered in a piece of theatre which is less hidebound to the past and what we think Scots is than to a future where we get to define how our language can be expressed. The combination of Scott’s writing, his direction, and Caw’s translation of both onto the stage makes a compelling case. Ably supported by producer Jennifer Galt, set and costume designer Mela Adela, and lighting design by Benny Goodman, with sound design and composition from Patricia Panther, this has the hallmarks of a special night out, celebrating when the best Scots could be heard on a night in.Â
In a theatre in her home town of Cumbernauld, Caw makes an appeal – once the applause has died down – to support the theatre, which is under threat of closure, where her nan first took her for classes. It is a neat way of ending the show as Bonnie’s papa, a working-class poet of some skill, has just delivered his appeal to Bonnie: to mind where she cam fae.
Common Tongue is on tour throughout Scotland until the 18th of October 2025.
Review Date: 10th October 2025
