‘Girl From the North Country’ @ Broadway Dallas (Fair Park)
Photos by Evan Zimmerman for Murphy/Made
—Jan Farrington
It’s impossible to call Girl From the North Country a “jukebox” musical. Two fine, elusive storytellers come together for this very different “take” on that genre: Irish playwright Conor McPherson (The Weir, The Seafarer) is one, showing off his skill at bringing life-worn people together in pubs (or in this case, a Depression-era boarding house) to trade stories about their memories, fears, and hopes. And the other is Bob Dylan, whose half-century of songs—oblique, off-center, poetic, sometimes raging—are woven in and around the stories McPherson’s characters tell us.
Or is it the other way around—is it the characters who are woven around the songs? It does feel that way, not to slight McPherson’s way with a good yarn. But Dylan’s songs are the spine and focus of Girl From the North Country, its national tour presented by Broadway Dallas through April 21 at The Music Hall in Fair Park. At times, the connection between a song and a character is clear; but in many more instances, the song comes at us sideways, with an emotion or a line of lyric that touches something indirectly.
But we don’t puzzle too much about the connections. The music is the thing. The stage is crowded with actor-musicians of great talent, and if they did nothing but sing and play their way through Dylan’s back catalog, that would be enough. The stories, dark and sad and sometimes even funny, anchor us to the tough times of Duluth, Minnesota (Dylan’s home town, btw) in the 1930s, but the songs are timeless, and make us remember that “a hard rain’s gonna fall” whenever it wants to—on any day, at any time, for any one of us.
Meet Nick and Elizabeth Laine (John Schiappa and Jennifer Blood). They run a rooming house in Duluth, but the bank’s about to foreclose on them. Their son Gene (Ben Biggers) is a poet (and a fight-starting drunk) about to lose his girlfriend Kate (Chiara Trentalange). Their adopted daughter Marianne (Sharaé Moultrie) is pregnant, but won’t name the father. Elizabeth has a form of dementia and at times seems lost in delusions—but in her own odd way, keeps track of her kids and participates in the life of the boarding house. (You wouldn’t think this was a comedy role, but Blood keeps us in stitches.)
The town doctor (Alan Ariano) doubles as a narrator; the upscale Burke family (David Benoit, Jill Van Velzer, Aidan Wharton) have lost their business and sold everything; widow Mrs. Neilsen (Carla Woods) is having an affair with Nick while waiting for her inheritance to “clear.” Nick’s trying to marry off Marianne (who is, problematically in a this mostly white town, a young Black woman) to the much older Mr. Perry (Jay Russell)—a nice feller, but she isn’t interested.
Into the mix on a rainy night come two drifters: alcoholic Bible salesman “Rev” Walker (Jeremy Webb), and young boxer Joe Scott (Matt Manuel), just out of prison, having done time for a murder he says he didn’t do. And somehow, as things happen, their arrival shakes things up for any number of these down-on-their-luck folks. Both men have an energy that crackles, for good or ill.
Songs in the show include Dylan mega-hits—”All Along the Watchtower,” “Forever Young,” “I Want You”—plus less-known but compelling numbers. Moultrie deliver’s Marianne’s longing and pain in “Tight Connection to My Heart (Has Anyone Seen My Love?)” … Manuel’s Joe connects with “Hurricane,” Dylan’s bitter song about another Black boxer who spent time in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. And in a blazing performance, mother Elizabeth grabs the microphone for a memorable, rocking rendition of “Like a Rolling Stone”—clearly the anthem for all these lost souls. I hadn’t though of that song in a long while, but if you listen, it will break your heart. How does it feel?
Playwright McPherson directs the show, and orchestrator Simon Hale’s arrangements only make Dylan’s songs better. As Girl’s movement director, Lucy Hind creates a language that compels our eyes and emotions without distracting “dance numbers.” The period costumes (with shots of vivid color strategically on the most hopeful characters) and the fluid set design are both by Rae Smith, who makes terrific use of mesh screens to create layers of characters and place. And lighting designer Mark Henderson has a beautiful eye: he highlights characters imaginatively, and can shift from cold light to the down-lit warmth of a family gathered at the dinner table.
This is a show for Dylan fans (it’s a feast), for new “gens” discovering this legendary music maker, and for theater folk who relish a downbeat but well-told story that makes the heart ache so good—and gives us a smidge of hope to carry home with us.
WHEN: April 9-21, 2024
WHERE: The Music Hall at Fair Park, Dallas
WEB: broadwaydallas.org
