"May His Songs Always Be Sung"
There’s
so much vigorous handshaking, hugging, kissing, and other forms of human
contact in Girl from the North Country, the often thrilling Bob Dylan-scored
musical now at Broadway’s Belasco Theatre, one can only imagine a backstage
area filled with hand sanitizers, soap and water, disinfectants, and other
forms of antiviral precautionary items. Sorrowfully, despite the multiple raves
the show has garnered—give or take a few nitpicks, like my own, below—it seemed
last night that the current health crisis is having an impact. Near me, at the
rear of the orchestra, were a number of notably empty seats.
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| Caitlin Houlahan, Colton Ryan. All photos: Matt Murphy. |
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| Colton Ryan, Kimber Elayne Sprawl, Mare Winningham, Jay O. Sanders. |
If,
however, you intend to keep going to the theatre but want to be especially selective,
you won’t go wrong by choosing Girl from the North
Country. I reviewed it here in October
2018, when it played at the Public, and have adapted that review below to
reflect cast changes, alter a sentence here and there, and add a comment or two
to what I previously wrote.
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| Jay O. Sanders. |
The many fans of the
wonderful Irish playwright Conor
McPherson (The Weir, The Night Alive) will no doubt be
excited to see a new play by him but music lovers will be even more excited at
its incorporation of many classic songs by Minnesota troubadour Bob Dylan. I wish I could
say both of these brilliant talents come off equally as well.
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| Jeannette Bayardelle and company. |
What makes Girl
from the North Country—now at the Belasco, following its Off-Broadway stay
at the Public, itself coming after a hit premiere at London’s Old Vic and a
West End transfer—so special, however, is the showcase it provides for one
magnificent cover after another of Dylan’s oeuvre. This is thanks largely to
the extraordinary orchestrations and arrangements of Simon Hale (with
contributions from McPherson himself) and the singing of an exceptional cast.
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| Mare Winningham, Kimber Elayne Sprawl. |
Even if, like me, you find McPherson’s play—set during the
Depression in a boarding house in Dylan’s home town of Duluth, Minnesota, in
November and December 1934—less than stellar, you’ll probably agree that it
serves aptly as a dramatic context into which Dylan’s songs fit beautifully.
And that’s regardless of the fact that he was born seven years after the
fictional events depicted. Girl from the North Country, named, of
course, after a Dylan classic, is so musically agreeable that I’m forced to put
my caveats about its dramaturgy aside and recommend it with a five-star rating,
whether you’re a Dylan fan or not.
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| Luba Mason. |
“Blowin’ in the Wind,” one of the troubadour’s best-known songs,
is not among the 20 sung or played during the show, but “Idiot Wind” is, and
the dialogue makes frequent references to the metaphor of the wind’s blowing
during the hardscrabble days faced by all the troubled characters. Everything
transpires in the confines of Nick (the outstanding Jay O. Sanders, replacing Stephen
Bogardus) and Elizabeth Laine’s (Mare Winningham, better than ever)
“guesthouse,” most of it taking place around preparations for and consumption
of Thanksgiving dinner.
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| Mare Winningham, Jay O. Sanders. |
Nick is deeply in debt and Elizabeth has early onset dementia,
which doesn’t stop the otherwise decent Nick from carrying on with Mrs. Neilsen
(Jeannette Bayardelle, in great voice), a widow waiting for the money her
railroad employee husband left her to clear probate. The Laines’ 20-year-old
son, Gene (Colton Ryan, superior), is a jobless, alcoholic, would-be writer.
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| Robert Joy. |
In one of the plot elements most difficult to swallow, the
Laines’ 19-year-old daughter, Marianne (Kimber Elayne Sprawl, wonderful), is
black, abandoned by her parents as an infant and raised by the bighearted
Laines. Marianne’s problem is she’s five months pregnant by a Lake Superior
boatman who’s sailed off into the Minnesota sunset.
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| Matt McGrath, Mare Winningham, Todd Almond. |
Guests at the house are, in addition to Mrs. Neilsen, the
down-and-out Mr. and Mrs. Burke (Marc Kudisch and Luba Mason, each terrific),
and their tall, mentally challenged, 30-year-old son, Elias (Todd Almond,
excellent). The Burkes are later joined in the middle of the night by a
good-looking, black boxer, Joe Scott (Austin Scott, replacing Sydney James
Harcourt, very good but looking more like a dancer than a pugilist), and a nasty
bible salesman called Reverend Marlowe (Matt McGrath, perfectly seedy in the
role earlier played by David Pittu). Each trails unpleasant secrets.
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| Austin Scott, Kimber Elayne Sprawl. |
Filling out the cast of principals are three more characters.
One is Dr. Walker (Robert Joy, living up to his name), the substance-abusing local
doctor, who also occasionally serves as the Our Town-like narrator,
speaking into a standing mic to provide expository background and, at the end,
a (posthumous) summary of what happened to the people we’ve met. Then there’s
the thickly bearded Mr. Perry (Tom Nelis, spot on), an elderly “shoe mender,”
who offers money to make the reluctant Marianne his live-in companion (marriage
to her being illegal). Finally, we have Kate Draper (Caitlin Houlahan, sweetly
satisfying), the pretty girl who leaves Gene to marry someone more stable.
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| Tom Nelis. |
This assemblage is further amplified by a gifted four-member,
racially mixed, backup-singing and dancing ensemble (Matthew Frederick Harris,
John Schiappa, Rachel Stern, and Chelsea Lee Williams) who represent friends
and neighbors. The show’s fluid conventions allow moments when the ensemble
members get brief solos, just as the principals often drop their characters to
become part of the ensemble’s choral numbers. They may even play musical
instruments, as when both Kudisch and Mason demonstrate their drumming skills.
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| Mare Winningham. |
McPherson’s multiple plot strands follow each
character, introducing elements of financial loss, substance abuse, abandonment,
loneliness, marital stress, sexual longing, adultery, romantic heartbreak,
fisticuffs, blackmail, gunfire, and death. McPherson’s skill at creating
colorful characters with tangy dialogue keeps
us engaged, even when the situations border on melodramatic contrivance. And
some things simply don’t ring true, like having all these 1930s Midwesterners drop so many f-bombs, or an intrusive moment of magic realism when Marianne
describes the encounter that led to her pregnancy.
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| Marc Kudisch. |
Then there’s the racial issue. Given the play’s own emphasis on
race-based biases in 1920s and 1930s Duluth (Dr. Walker cites a notorious 1920
lynching), the idea of a black child being raised by white parents while barely
raising local eyebrows seems a stretch. Even the entry of the black Joe Scott
into the household, and his casual reaction to Marianne’s presence, doesn’t
feel right. This air of unreality is further underlined by casting a black
actress as Mrs. Nielsen, Nick’s lover, without a single comment about their miscegenation
within an otherwise racially charged script.
Elizabeth is as likely to be not only lucid and articulate in
one moment as she is in the next to be mentally distracted. Despite
Winningham's winning performance, this often makes it confusing as to just how
bad her condition is. It’s also a bit much to see Nick, inches from his wife,
not only speaking candidly about her to Mrs. Nielsen but openly discussing
their affair as if Elizabeth weren’t there. These are just a few of the
problems that make McPherson’s script less than it might be.
The playwright’s staging, aided significantly by Lucy Hind’s
movement direction, mingles heightened theatricality with Depression-era
realism. Sometimes it evokes the feeling of painters like Thomas Hart
Benton. However, because of the show’s position between a straight
play and a musical, not everyone can avoid overacting to achieve it.
Rae Smith’s open scene design—movable walls, background vistas,
and furniture—allows for the omnipresent company to move things about in the
semidarkness. Smith’s period costumes are especially on the mark, and little
could be done to improve the deftly imaginative lighting of Mark Henderson. Simon Baker’s sound design makes everything easy to listen to.
Some have questioned whether Girl from the North
Country is or isn’t a jukebox musical. Of course, it is, given that
the script is designed to allow the insertion of multiple, preexisting, songs.
There are many kinds of jukebox musicals. This one is the type that fits the
songs of a particular performer or writer into a new story, such as
Broadway’s Head over Heels,
with its Go-Gos’ score used for a plot set in the Middle Ages.
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| Company of Girl from the North Country. |
One of the things that makes Girl from the North
Country different is that Dylan’s lyrics often have little to do with
the moments they illustrate, or do so only tangentially. Even the title song
has nothing to do with the play, at least not directly. When a song is to be
sung, the characters don’t do so within a particular dramatic context but,
instead, step up to a mic and sing it for the audience. More significant than
the songs’ meaning-based specificity is their emotional value, which comes
across in the impact made by both their words and music, especially as
performed here, where every number sounds freshly minted.
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| Todd Almond and company. |
A CD is available of the London production but I’m looking forward to the Broadway recording, so I can
again listen to Jeannette Bayerdelle sing “Went to See the Gypsy,” Kimber
Elayne Sprawl perform “Tight Connection to My Heart,” Todd Almond warble “Duquesne
Whistle,” and, among so many other gems, Mare Winningham (known mainly as a dramatic
actress) do wonders for “Like a Rolling Stone” and, with the company, set your
heart racing with “Forever Young.”
To paraphrase a lyric in that last one, may Bob Dylan's songs always be sung.
Belasco Theatre
111 W. 44th St., NYC
Open run
