When Girl From the North Country opened last year, it gave a very good impression of being the best new musical of the season. Now traveling uptown from the Public Theater—after originating at London’s Old Vic—it’s been improved. If you can imagine that. This suggests that the transfer immediately has a hold on best new musical of the Broadway season.
Indeed, the only hitch is that traditionally the gauge of outstanding musicals is they contain original scores. Girl From the North Country doesn’t. Nevertheless, that requirement has been shifting since the increasing presence of the jukebox musical.
Offhandedly, it could be said that Girl From the North Country is one of those jukebox types. Dylan has been in this situation with The Times They Are A-Changin’ before he was Nobeled. And another thing: Girl From the North Country could just as well be considered in the integrated-musical column, which has also prevailed for the last several decades.
[Read Jesse Oxfeld’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
But the heart-breaking, hardscrabble Girl From the North Country is quite the opposite. Instead, call Girl From the North Country a disintegrated musical. It’s disintegrated in the treatment of the Dylan songs within an original Conor McPherson book that itself is about the disintegration of a family and the 1934 Duluth, Minnesota community where the family strives.
Nick Laine (Jay O. Sanders) runs a boarding house where his mentally-disturbed wife Elizabeth (Mare Winningham), his aching late adolescent son Gene (Colton Ryan), and adopted black daughter Marianne (Kimber Elayne Sprawl) cater to mostly destitute guests. Among these are money-short Mr. Burke (Marc Kudisch), dissatisfied Mrs. Burke (Luba Mason), and their autistic son Elias Burke (Todd Almond).
Then there are other transients—not to say vagrants—Joe Scott (Austin Scott), a onetime boxing champ who has eyes for Marianne, and Reverend Marlowe (Matt McGrath), who may not be as thoroughly spiritual as he makes out. Passing through but slowly is Mrs. Neilsen (Jeannette Bayardelle), with whom Nick is dallying under Elizabeth’s aware gaze; old Mr. Perry (Tom Nelis), who fancies himself a suitor for Marianne; and Kate Draper (Caitlin Houlahan), Gene’s wished-for intended. Last but not least, by virtue of serving as a genial Our Town-like narrator, is Dr. Walker (Robert Joy).
This swirling gaggle is viewed through intercut sketches. Attempting to understand their relentless Depression lives and thereby make something of them, two or three or four troubled characters interact at different charged moments on Rae Smith’s often claustrophobic, sometimes wide open set and in Smith’s dingy period costume and in Mark Henderson’s properly engulfing lights.
How is the Dylan canon plumbed to serve the searching characters? Almost never by delivering the 21 chosen numbers in their entirety. This, notwithstanding Dylan being the Bard of Multiple Lyrics. That’s to say, the pithy snatches are disintegrated—with Simon Hale responsible for the solid orchestrations, arrangements and musical supervision. (McPherson sometimes has his hand in here, too.) Also, it’s significant that when last words and notes of the songs are intoned, Girl From the North Country never expects applause.
Nor do the songs express explicitly who and what the characters are. More often than not they’re oblique references to the characters’ states of mind. Perhaps the sole exception occurs when Gene and Kate face each other and insist, in Dylan’s blunt outcry, “I Want You.” Definitely not an exception is Mare Winningham’s somewhat truncated but devastatingly effective version of “Like a Rolling Stone.” Audiences won’t quickly recover from that trenchant rendition. (Presumably, either Dylan or a representative has signed off on the alterations.)
McPherson directs the production with calculated style, proving himself the rare playwright who can helm his own work. The actors often sing at microphones. Many times they gather in groups to back up those, like Bayardelle and Scott, fervently soloing. Winningham goes to the onstage piano, once playing Debussy’s “Clair de Lune.” Almond has a harmonica solo. At different times, Mason and Kudisch work a drum set.
Among the 13-strong cast members, there’s no first of equals—unless it’s Winningham for her addled Elizabeth or unless it’s Scott for his down-and-out boxer or unless it’s Bayardelle for her wise Mrs. Neilsen or unless it’s McGrath for his slippery Reverend Marlowe or unless it’s Kudisch for his bullying Mr. Burke or unless it’s any of the other terrific eight.
Although no Girl From the North Country choreographer is credited in the program, Lucy Hind is cited as movement director. There’s plenty of it. Despairing as the book and so many of Dylan’s songs are, joy breaks through several times over. The entire cast bursts into spell-inducing, celebratory dance. It’s the dance of people who must dance or otherwise give in to debilitating, irreversible despair.
Prolific, proficient McPherson is known for his plays about contemporary Irish woes (like The Weir, The Seafarer). He wouldn’t necessarily be expected to produce a profound look at the American Midwest. But he has, and—with the observant, compulsively rhyming Bob Dylan helping immeasurably—he’s done it with an unflagging regard for people anywhere at the frayed end of their tether.
Girl from the North Country opened March 5, 2020, at the Belasco Theatre. Tickets and information: northcountryonbroadway.com
