By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out”)
When Girl from the North Country premiered on Broadway, there were a number of ebullient reviews trumpeting the musical for its inventive reimagining of Bob Dylan’s music and its tautly written book by Conor McPherson.
The ensemble nature of this work is at its very heart. Lead performers take the front of the stage to sing into several microphones while many of the remaining cast members work in the background supporting them with harmonious choruses. The music selections are not among the most famous of Dylan tunes, but were chosen to add to the dramatic tension of the piece and to be evocative of the difficulties being endured by Minnesotans in the Great Depression.
If attendees to the Broadway Across New Orleans series are looking for a juke box musical with many of Bob Dylan’s better- known songs, then they are looking for The Times They Are a’Changin’, a 2006 musical flop that was conceived, choreographed and directed by Twyla Tharp. Following in the footsteps of his fellow Columbia Records recording artist Billy Joel, with whom Tharp had successfully staged Movin’ Out, Dylan encouraged Tharp to transform his catalog into a similar stage spectacle. Unfortunately, Dylan had no artistic control and Tharp’s vision of a dark circus setting failed to capture Broadway audiences’ imagination. It closed only a little over a month after opening.
Girl from the North Country, whose title comes from an early Dylan song on “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album, is a vehicle for playwright Conor McPherson (The Weir) to demonstrate his remarkable talent to write beautifully and poetically for the stage. The book is written in such a way that its voice is what drives Girl from the North Country.
McPherson’s direction is deliberate. He is one of Ireland’s great living playwrights and his words greatly matter. The songs are the beautiful dressing that accentuate his words and he leaves almost no room for the usual applause that might typically follow a musical performance.
Thus, the work starts slowly and builds even as the house lights remain on as Act I begins. It is the same in Act II that starts with a plaintive song, the house lights dimming as the actors return to the stage in support of the lone singer on stage.
Girl from the North Country debuted at the Old Vic in 2017 and later opened off-Broadway for a short run at the Public Theater before transferring to Broadway’s Belasco Theatre just before the COVID shutdown in March of 2020. The sizes of the theaters were in relatively small houses and that makes sense Smaller works like Once and Come from Away work best in more intimate settings and the same is true for Girl from the North Country.
With more than 2600 seats, the Saenger Theater is just too large a venue to pull its massive audience into the intimacy demanded for McPherson’s imagined world of a weary 1934 Duluth, Minnesota. The further back one goes in the Saenger, the harder it is to hear McPherson’s words and the more difficult it is to feel the emotions of the actors on the stage.
While the Saenger Theater is ideal for massive stage renderings like Wicked and Hamilton, it lacks the warmth required to be an effective house for a smaller work like Girl from the North Country. Thus, there is a loss of connection to the performers on stage and to the music entirely performed on the stage by the actors and the musicians in the rear.
This is a great ensemble cast with actors who hold the audience’s rapt attention. It is an Actor’s Equity show and the singing is also absolutely superb. The orchestrations are rendered by arranger and musical supervisor Simon Hale with additional arrangements by McPherson. McPherson’s hand in the arrangements clearly shows he wanted none of Dylan’s music to upstage his words. There is hardly any time – or a brief musical measure – that doesn’t transition directly into a spoken phrase and action.
Dylan’s songs are especially evocative of the era even though they are anachronistic, having been penned some three decades and beyond the period in which the characters are set, approximately five years into the Great Depression.
The action takes place in a boarding house run by Nick Laine (John Schiappa) with his wife Elizabeth (Jennifer Blood), who is suffering from the first stages of adult onset dementia. The building is about to be foreclosed by the bank, meaning all of the inhabitants will have to vacate the premises by the end of the year. The Laines son Gene is trying his best to eke out a living, but like all able-bodied men of the era is finding jobs scarce and the future uncertain. His girlfriend Kate Draper (Chiara Trentalange) informs him she is leaving Duluth, hoping he will take a chance with her.
After seeing how inappropriate and out of control Elizabeth is, Mrs. Neilsen (Carla Woods), plays a woman with designs on Nick Laine, who might be able to develop a closer relationship were it not for that problematic wife of his.
The Laines have an adopted daughter, Marianne (Sharae Moultrie), who is ethnically Black, but is considered as much a part of the family as their own blood. When Marianne starts to present with a pregnancy, Nick Laine attempts to match her with wealthy, but elderly Mr. Perry, who is looking for a companion. Fiercely independent, Marianne resists the offer, but shows signs of being attracted to down-on-his-luck former prizefighter Joe Scott, who arrives in tow with a bible salesman, Reverend Marlowe (Jeremy Webb) late one night.
Neither may be what they say they are, but that doesn’t matter to this diverse and strange collection of ragtag folks just trying to get by in a country that is desolate and cold and economically torpid to them.
The last of the main characters is a family consisting of Mr. Burke (David Benoit), his wife Mrs. Burke (Jill Van Velzer) and their autistic son Elias (Aidan Wharton).
As Dr. Walker, Alan Ariano as serves as a defacto narrator for the tale, the physician who helps Elizabeth Laine secure medication to aide her in her fight for mental acuity. As McPherson relates, such hard times take their toll on the doctor himself, wherein he self medicates through abuse of morphine.
McPherson revels in telling such dark tales. His successful The Seafarer was a modern retelling of a Mephistophelian legend set in Ireland and involving a game of poker with more than money at stake and his ghost story telling play The Weir is almost always listed among the top ten Irish plays of all time.
Clearly, McPherson is a writer possessing superior talent.
But most people who attend musicals are drawn to the music and lyrics and are less interested in the book or even its bookwriter. Dominique Moriseau wrote the book for Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations, while Lynn Nottage penned the book for MJ: The Musical. Both are successful playwrights of color with numerous awards between them, yet neither has yet to receive a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical.
The Dylan selections accentuate the words spoken by the actors on the stage, but only diehard Dylan fans will recognize most of the songs selected for this show. Many of the arrangements slow down the original tempo or alter the singing in such a fashion as to render them as wholly new songs. But the songs do enhance the action on stage and are evocative of the era of the Great Depression.
So, while Dylan fans may be disappointed, McPherson devotees will be throughly satisified.
Music director Timothy Splain leads a talented group of four musicians including himself that play piano, harmonium, guitar, violin, mandolin and bass. Actors David Benoit and Jill Van Velzer share duties at the front of the stage on the drums.
The minimalist set and costumes were designed by Rae Smith. The mostly muted, earthy tones reflect the desolation of the times and the desperation of the people. The mostly dark lighting is spectacularly rendered by Mark Henderson with sound designs by Simon Baker.
Girl from the North Country, written and directed by Conor McPherson with music and lyrics by Bob Dylan, continues at the Saenger Theater tonight through Sunday, Oct. 20. Tickets are available here or by calling the box office at 504-287-0351.
