Life imitating art? In a tale of treachery and tragedy straight out of a ballad, the English folk singer Shirley Collins dramatically lost her voice on stage in the late 70s. Her husband had just her left for another woman, who’d taken to showing up at Collins’s gigs – rubbing salt in the wounds by wearing the offending ex’s jumpers. Humiliated, Collins opened her mouth but nothing came out. “He undid me. I should have got angry, but I got heartbroken,” she explains in this portrait of the artist as an older and wiser woman.
Diagnosed with dysphonia, Collins dropped off the folk map until, aged 82, she released a comeback album, Lodestar, last year. With the help of old letters, yellowing photos, audio recordings and old home-movie footage, Collins recalls her life – with additional interviews by adoring young folk singers, plus superfan Stewart Lee. We also watch her twitching with nerves, recording again for the first time in decades. Collins drinks tea out of a mug with “diva” on it – nothing could be further from the truth. She is a brilliant documentary subject – plain-speaking, authentic, feisty and seemingly without ego.
