leaving homeThere are two things you need to know about Catherine Ireton: one, she comes from Ireland; two, she has the most remarkable singing voice.

Living in Limerick in 2005, Ireton got hit on in a bar by her friend’s youngest brother. At that moment, she decided to leave, packing what her dad calls her ‘19.9kg’ and getting on a one-way flight to Glasgow Prestwick.

Drawing on her birth-nation’s long history of folk music, Leaving Home Party is a story told through song about making her way in the world. Ireton sings her everyday epic in captivating style; moving from one country to another, she details the slow process of tiny moments of letting go until you feel like a foreigner when you go home.

It is a piece crafted with thought and intuition, with Ireton teasing out the history and stories of her past as she moves further and further towards the present. The most heartfelt passages are those involving Ireton’s ‘mother’s mother’s mother’ who travelled far and wide but eventually died within ten miles of her Irish birthplace – and is admired for doing so. This thread bursts with an ancestry and scope which her story sometimes lacks.

She is joined on stage by musician Ignacio Agrimbau who appears to have at least a basic grasp of every instrument under the sun. In truth, though, you rarely take your eyes off Ireton, who sings her part-poem, part-monologue, with a quality and variation in her musicianship to match that of her voice.

Verity Sadler’s design is deceptive in its simplicity, using metallic materials to bring to mind the transitional spaces so much of Ireton’s life has pivoted on. She creates a world of airport terminals, train stations, internet cafés and shopping malls; functional spaces that seem to evoke a sense of emptiness, the nothingness that lies between two places, something to be navigated as we move from place to place. Her design punctures these nondescript notes with two striking green circles whose meaning is more implacable, but hint at pockets of rurality and Ireton’s spatial sequence synesthesia. It is a restrained but eloquent piece of stage design.

Despite the occasionally extraordinary nature of its presentation, though, Ireton’s story is a fairly ordinary one. And touching though it often is, you are left with the impression that hers is a journey still ongoing.

Leaving Home Party is at Summerhall (Venue 26) until 24 August. For more information and tickets go to the Edinburgh Fringe website.