The Singer opens up a thrilling new perspective on what a singer is, and on how a song can be made, heard and felt.
This “gig theatre” is built around the intertwined journeys of two singers. Joe is a talented Deaf musician and songwriter who conducts a Deaf choir and sings with his hands and whole body. Andy is a hearing busker, desperate to reclaim the life he once had as a hit songwriter. They face very different barriers, but both are searching for a place in the music industry and for a way to be heard on their own terms.
What is most remarkable about The Singer is its ambition to make the gig an equal experience for audiences with different hearing experiences. Joe’s performance is not a side event to the music; it is the music. In a duet with Andy, the two stand together at centre stage. Andy does what we might expect: picks up his guitar and sings loud and clear. Joe, meanwhile, is no interpreter tucked away at the side of the stage, like the sign-language interpreters sometimes seen on television news. He wears a SubPac vibration vest that allows him to physically feel the bass, and signs in British Sign Language (BSL). His hands and whole body move with the beat.
At these moments, it barely matters whether a hearing audience member understands every sign. Joe’s performance is so physical, rhythmic and commanding that he fills the stage with a language of his own. As Joe signs throughout the show, it becomes increasingly clear that what he does during the musical numbers is not simply an extension of what happens in between. He doesn’t translate the songs. The songs belong to him too. The lyrics, rhythms and beats are his to perform, shape and claim.
There is an especially striking moment when the acoustic waves that hearing audiences take for granted are suddenly smothered. It is as if a membrane has dropped between stage and auditorium, and only the beat and fragments of melody are allowed to seep through. It could easily have become a theatrical trick designed to push the audience towards sentimentality. Instead, director and playwright Cora Bissett uses the silence to make everyone look and listen more closely. The Singer doesn’t simply let people hear the music differently. It makes everyone see it.
That only works because the visual world of the show is given the same weight as its sound. Captions run throughout, appearing both on screens at the back and front of the stage. Daniel Hughes’s captioning and Benedetta Zanetti’s BSL direction turn them into part of the performance itself: fonts shift in size and colour; words vibrate, blur, rotate and scatter across the space. Emma Jones’s lighting responds to the captions and the music, creating a visual rhythm of its own. The captions aren’t an explanation of what is happening on stage. They are happening on stage.
The Singer features original music and lyrics by KT Tunstall, which deepen the narrative without overwhelming it. The pop-rock songs sit beautifully with Dylan Wood’s distinctive voice, whose grain has the warmth and twang of acoustic guitar strings. Jamie Rea is terrific as Joe: funny, expressive and hugely charismatic. Drawing on his own experience of hearing loss, Rea makes BSL feel rhythmic, comic, intimate and poetic. Petre Dobre brings an equally brilliant physicality to his multiple roles. His expertise in BSL adds another layer of precision and expression. Hannah Jarrett-Scott throws herself between a succession of sharply drawn characters with impressive ease.
The Singer is far more than a gig with theatre bolted on, or an exercise in making music “accessible”. It is a bold rethinking of what a musical performance can be — funny, moving, visually inventive and unmistakably Glaswegian. It asks big questions about identity, community, human connection, disability and artistic ownership, without ever losing sight of the sheer pleasure of a great song. It is a fantastic piece of theatre, and deserves many more seasons.
The Singer
Dundee Rep Theatre and Solar Bear co-production, in collaboration with Aberdeen Performing Arts.
Based on the short film The Singer by Cora Bissett and Jamie Rea.
Written & directed by Cora Bissett.
Music & Lyrics KT Tunstall.
Cast Includes: Jamie Rea, Dylan Wood, Hannah Jarrett-Scott, Petre Dobre.
Until (on tour): 30 Aug 2026 (Edinburgh)
Running Time: 1 hour and 20 mins (no interval)
Photo Credit: Tommy Ga Ken Wan