When the call comes from Bob Dylan’s people asking if you’d consider writing a show featuring his songs, you at the very least think about it. Conor McPherson pondered the proposition for quite some time and was beginning to feel it wasn’t something he could pull off when, out of nowhere, the notion of a guesthouse in Minnesota in the 1930s came to him …
Girl from the North Country is set in a shabby guesthouse in Duluth, Minnesota — birthplace of Dylan — in the winter of 1934. It’s the Great Depression and the family running the place, and their guests, are all struggling in different ways.
Fifty-something Nick Laine (Colin Conner), who inherited the guesthouse from his grandfather, is in danger of losing it to the bank. His wife, Elizabeth (Katie Brayben), has early onset dementia and is behaving erratically. Their son Gene (Colin Bates) is a drunk and a wannabe writer. They have an adopted daughter, Marianne (Justina Kehinde). She’s unmarried and pregnant and black and, as the occasional narrator Dr Walker (Chris McHallem) reminds us, Duluth is a town where, just a few years earlier, three black men were lynched by a white mob for a crime they did not commit. Meanwhile, guests at the inn include Mrs Neilsen (Maria Omakinwa), a widow who’s having an affair with Nick, a boxer who’s been in jail and is seeking a fresh start, a travelling bible salesman, and a couple whose strong adult son has learning difficulties.
There’s a lot going on but this is not a plot-driven show. It’s light on narrative, offering little more than snapshots of the characters’ lives. As is often the case with Macpherson, who also directs here, there’s a hint of the mystical. Marianne claims the father of her child visited her in the night and “it was deeper than a man. Older than a man. When I pressed my face into his tunic and I breathed in, I could smell, like, ancient water … And I could see through him — into the ancient past. A figure in a boat, and someone was singing and I … “ Later, Marianne will end up with a partner called Joseph. Marianne and Joseph and a miracle child — ringing any bells?
There are a couple of dozen or so Dylan songs, sung by different members of the company and played by onstage musicians on 1930s instruments. They range from some of Dylan’s most celebrated numbers — “Like A Rolling Stone”, “Hurricane”, “Forever Young” — to a few you might never have heard of.
Do the songs advance the action? Not in the slightest. In an introduction to the published script, McPherson writes: “It strikes me that many of Mr Dylan’s songs can be sung at any time, by anyone in any situation, and still make sense and resonate with that particular place and person and time.”
When working on the initial production — the show was first staged in 2017 at the Old Vic — McPherson would sometimes “wake in the night with a Bob Dylan song going round in my head. The next day I would come into rehearsals and we’d learn the song and put it in the show. Did it fit? Did it matter? It always fit somehow.”
Despite the show’s distinctly downbeat conclusion, it left me feeling both moved and exhilarated
He’s absolutely right. It really doesn’t seem to matter if the lyrics don’t strictly apply to the characters or their situations. They certainly chime with the general Steinbeckian hardscrabble atmosphere and Girl from the North Country is all about atmosphere. It’s a tone poem, a mood piece — and the mood is bleak, but it’s not depressing. The brilliance of the performances — the magnetic Brayben and Kehinde are standouts — and the stunning rearrangements of Dylan’s songs have an uplifting effect. I would watch Brayben’s electrifying interpretation of “Like A Rolling Stone” and Kehinde’s “Tight Connections to my Heart” and the company’s mesmerising “Slow Train Coming/License to Kill” on a loop if I could.
Despite the show’s distinctly downbeat conclusion, it left me feeling both moved and exhilarated. But don’t take my word for it. Bob Dylan himself went to see it on Broadway and, asked in an interview what he thought, said: “The play had me crying at the end. I can’t even say why. When the curtain came down, I was stunned. I really was.” If you’re unable to make it to the Old Vic, a filmed performance of the hit Broadway production is available on Blu-Ray and DVD.
In Girl from the North Country, Nick tries to marry off his daughter Marianne to a wealthy but much older man in whom she has no romantic interest. Tevye tries to do exactly the same thing with his daughter Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof. A magnificent production of the classic musical has just embarked on a tour of the UK, and will also play in Dublin.
Loosely based on short stories by Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem, Fiddler on the Roof — the title comes from a recurring image in the paintings of Marc Chagall — is set in the fictional shtetl of Anatevka, not far from Kiev, in the Pale of Settlement in Tsarist Russia in 1905.
Tevye, a poor Jewish dairyman, is struggling to come to terms with the fact that all the old traditions are being eroded. When it comes to affairs of the heart, his three adult daughters place love above duty. Tzeitel (Natasha Jules Bernard), Hodel (Georgia Bruce) and Chava (Hannah Bristow), all defy Tevye, each more egregiously than the last in his eyes. And as if that weren’t enough, the Jewish community faces growing antisemitic harassment from the Russian authorities.
This production, directed by Jordan Fein, premiered at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre last year and then transferred to the Barbican, where I saw it. Adam Danheisser was superb as Tevye. Matthew Woodyatt is playing him on the tour. Jodie Jacobs is his wife, Golde.
The songs, written by composer Jerry Bock and lyricist Sheldon Harnick, include “Tradition”, “Matchmaker”, “If I Were A Rich Man” and “Sunrise, Sunset”. They are, as the younger generation would have it, absolute bangers. The energetic choreography by Julia Cheng is on point (the famous “bottle dance” never fails to impress), the wheat field design is beautiful and evocative and the musical’s themes are poignant, relevant and universal.
Joseph Stein, the librettist, liked to tell the story of attending a performance in Tokyo at which the Japanese producer asked him: “Tell me, do they really understand this show in America? It’s so Japanese.”
Girl from the North Country at www.oldvictheatre.com runs until 23 August
fiddlerontheroofuk.com tours until 3 January
