Girl from The North Country
By Conor McPherson
Words and music by Bob Dylan
Directed by Conor McPherson
Musical arranger Simon Hale
Designer Rae Smith
The Old Vic, London
Saturday 29th July 2017, 14.30
CAST
Marianne Laine – Sheila Atim
Dr Walker – Ron Cook
Mrs Burke – Bronagh Gallagher
Elizabeth Laine- Shirley Henderson
Nick Laine – Ciaran Hinds
Katherine Draper – Claudia Jolly
Joe Scott – Karl Queensborough (understudy)
Mrs Neilsen – Debbie Kurup
Ensemble -Kirsty Malpass
Mr Perry – Jim Norton
Ensemble – Tom Peters
Gene Laine – Sam Reid
Reverend Marlowe – Michael Shaeffer
Elias Burke – Jack Shaloo
Mr Burke – Stanley Townsend
MUSICIANS
Alan Berry – MD, piano, harmonium
Charlie Brown – violin, mandolin
Pete Callard – lap steel resonator, acoustic guitars
Don Richardson – upright bass
You Ain’t Going’ Nowhere
The genesis of this play is unexpected. Bob Dylan’s people approached award-winning Irish playwright Conor McPherson (The Weir) and offered him the chance to do a play with Bob Dylan’s songs. He was given total artistic freedom, and wrote an outline, Dylan approved it and they promptly sent him 40 albums. He chose twenty songs. It is not a musical, the songs are done front on to the audience, apparently through a mic on a stand (but everyone is actually head mic’d, I noted). McPherson says “It’s a conversation between the songs and the story.” That is they reflect on the story, rather than narrate or propel it.
By the title I predicted early Dylan, but wrong … the best-represented albums are Infidels and Street Legal, and it goes right up to Dusquene Whistle from Tempest in 2012. McPherson says he leaned towards his favourite albums. Oddly, if the title track was played in full, Girl From the North Country, I blinked and I missed it though it is listed in the programme credits. I think there were a few lines, but not the hook. However two programme unlisted songs did appear, All Along The Watchtower was cut surprisingly and seamlessly into Hurricane, and the curtain calls were taken to My Back Pages.
McPherson has set the play in 1934 in Duluth, Minnesota, seven years before Bob Dylan was born. The arranger, Simon Hale, should be doing the next Bob Dylan album if there’s any justice in the world. Every song arrangement is radical, but he reveals that McPherson insisted he only use 1930s instruments, and banned a requested Hammond organ or a pedal steel guitar. I feel Bob would like that. It’s lit in the warm yellow light of 1930s light bulbs.
Gene Laine (Sam Reid) and his father, Nick, (Ciaran Hinds)
It takes place in a cheap boarding house, run by Nick (Ciaran Hinds). His wife, Elizabeth, has early onset dementia (played by Shirley Henderson in the outstanding performance of the whole play). This dementia gives her the freedom to say whatever she wants. His son, Gene (Sam Reid) is a would be short story writer, operating from the attic, and a drunk and as it turns out, a racist. Marianne (Sheila Atim), is their adopted daughter, an African-American girl who was left in a bag in the hotel as a baby (a handbag! We might ask) and who they brought up. In the play she’s four or five months pregnant. They’re trying to marry Marianne off to Mr Perry (Jim Norton), a 70 year old shoe store owner.
Mr Perry (Jim Norton) fancies his chances with Marianne (Sheila Atim)
The play is narrated by Dr Walker (Ron Cook). The references to Thornton Wilder’s Our Town are clear throughout, but at the end Dr Walker narrates what happened to the characters after the play’s action, and reveals that, as in Our Town, he’s speaking from the cemetery, as he died shortly after the action and watched their futures ‘as if through glass walls.’
The regulars in the hotel are the widowed Mrs Neilsen (Debbie Kurup), who Nick is having an affair with, and the Burke family. Mr Burke (Stanley Townsend) a blowhard booster of a businessman (he just grinned and shook my hand, but no was all he said … came into my head). His bottle blonde with black roots wife (Bronagh Gallagher) is devoted to their huge shambling grown up son, Elias (Jack Shaloo) who has a mental age of four. The doctor keeps her supplied wth “drops” which are morphine. In her crimson dress, fur stole and heels she looks wonderfully incongruous every time she takes her place behind the drum kit at the front stage left.
Elizabeth (Shirley Henderson) and Reverend Marlowe (Michael Shaeffer)
The new arrivals at 3 am are the “Reverend” Marlowe (Michael Shaeffer) who is a bible salesman, and Joe Scott, an African-American ex-boxer. In this afternoon’s performance, Joe Scott was played by the understudy Karl Queensborough. Karl had two or three major songs, including a duet, and lots of dancing. Had I not known he was understudying, I would never have guessed. He is taking over from Arinzé Kent who is obviously in all the online photos, and who is much brawnier and also darker. Looking at the photos on line, Arinzé Kent leaps out physically as “the boxer”, however Karl Queensborough created a perfectly satisfactory version. One always wonders, speaking to actors, about understudies appearing in matinees. It is in the play’s long term interest to give understudies a go.
The McPherson touch is the partial revelation of several weird back stories. Did Elias kill a girl in the woods? Are the Reverend and the Boxer who they’re supposed to be? What happened after the Reverend tried to blackmail Mr Burke? Did old Mr Perry abuse Elizabeth as a child? How did Marianne get pregnant? How did Nick’s baby sister die? Who is the girl along the corridor that Nick and Elizabeth hear at night? Did Gene really apply for a job? Why did he give Katherine, his ex-girlfriend a St Christopher? Yes, it’s in the undercurrents.
Elizabeth (Shirley Henderson)
Shirley Henderson’s Elizabeth is the constant odd presence, dancing in some strange Appalachian hillbilly style she looks tiny and scrawny but incredibly flexible. She is lifting her skirts in total unawareness, sitting with her legs wide apart, fiddling around in her groin, saying the wrong thing, leaping on tables and people. Her adopted daughter, Marianne, played by Sheila Atim, is extremely tall and thin, so they are a major visual contrast.
Marianne (Sheila Atim)
The themes of the Depression come in. Like Hurricane Carter in the Dylan song, Joe was set up because he was black and went to prison. We have tales of the strangeness of the Laines adopting a black baby. Gene’s step-sister might be black, but that doesn’t stop him addressing Joe as “boy” and trying to start a fight. Joe and the Reverend are virtually on the hobo trail. The Burkes business schemes have all gone down the river. Mrs Neilsen’s hoped widow’s legacy has all been eaten up by lawyers. Yes, the characters are sketched and an assorted bunch, but they’re all interesting, the story has momentum and never flags.
Everyone in the cast is a singer, and a lead singer too, except Nick … significantly as the play revolves around his presence. They all do choruses too. Bronagh Gallagher drums several times. Michael Schaeffer’s drumming on Like A Rolling Stone is flat out professional level. Shirley Henderson adds piano touches behind dialogue elsewhere.
THE SONGS:
On the choice of songs, Conor McPherson is quoted in the programme:
A lot of fans love that Woody Guthrie dust bowl kind of Bob Dylan, with 16 verses and no chorus. But what I was looking for here were songs with more musical development in them, that had a bridge, a chorus, a middle eight, all that stuff, that give the performers the chance to lean into something emotionally and go deeper and deeper into the music.
From the programme
Face it, it might be the best Bob Dylan concert you’ll ever see in 2017. The arrangements beat the covers compilations, even the official ones. The choices shine light on somewhat lesser-known songs too. They all work, but can you imagine I Want You done as a huge male-female power ballad duet with whispered ending? That’s the son Gene, and his ex-girlfriend Katherine. Or the gorgeous Mrs Neilsen crooning I Went To See The Gypsy near the start?
Went to see the gypsy
Stayin’ in a big hotel … TO
… I watched the sun come rising
From that little Minnesota town …
No direct reference, but there is a reflection.
Can you imagine a tiny thin demented woman singing Like A Rolling Stone? Then a powerhouse drummer joins in with everybody else halfway through. The angular Marriane’s fantastic voice leads on Tight Connection to My Heart. Slow Train from Joe and the Reverend, sounds like the live gospel tours, but with mashed backing vocals.
You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere
The second act opens with a knees-up country Thanksgiving-eve dance to You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere with several taking it in turns to sing lead on a verse plus a full cast dancing and singing chorus. It might be the most fun You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere this Band and Byrds fan ever heard. Yes, it’s that good. Joe, the boxer sings Hurricane, slips into All Along The Watchtower, then Sheila Atim takes the medley home with a sincere direct female vocal Idiot Wind. The ghost of Elias clad all in white starts off a lonely mournful Dusquene Whistle, and again the cast come in and rock it up. Señor (Tales of Yankee Power), one of my all-time favourite Dylan songs (I love Street Legal) gets a superb version with shared lead vocals. My goodness, those lyrics … the last thing I remember before I stripped and kneeled … become so crystal clear in the enunciation. Is Your Love in Vain is superb. The ending is Elizabeth singing a sweet and tragic Forever Young solo, then the choir come in, far in the background.
It’s pulling the five star reviews, even from Michael Billington, who awards that level very rarely. The music and singing is definitely at the top end of five star. The play nods towards classic American drama, definitely Wilder, a touch of Miller and O’Neill (Ah! Wilderness was 1933), with that McPherson narrative addition of strange things happening behind the woodshed. Domenic Cavendish in The Telegraph thought it derivative. Yes, it is a touch. But the style fits, as do the almost Edward Hopper flats representing the hotel interior, though later we get photographic Minnesota landscapes projected on the descending flats.
A slight issue for me is that these are British actors doing American accents. As ever some are better than others, but inevitably some British inflexions creep in. Still while I suspect I might otherwise give the play four, I’m straining to add a sixth for musical performance. I’ve written this to New Morning and Infidels.
So I’ll go for my second five star review in two days.
*****
OLD VIC ORIGINAL CAST CD: Available 29th September 2016, Recorded at Abbey Road:
Track list:
It’s extraordinary … two five star productions, 200 yards apart, Girl From The North Country at the Old Vic and Yerma at the Young Vic!
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
5
Michael Billington, The Guardian *****
Paul Taylor, The Independent *****
Susannah Clapp, The Observer *****
Anne Treneman, The Times *****
Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard *****
4
David Jays, Sunday Times ****
Quentin Lets, The Daily Mail ****
Neil Norman, Express ****
Natasha Tripney, The Stage ****
Libby Purves, Theatre Cat ****
3
Domenic Cavendish, Telegraph ***
Bella Todd, The Arts Desk ***
2
Sarah Crompton, What’s On Stage **
LINKS ON THIS BLOG
RON COOK
The Homecoming, Trafalgar Studios 2015 (Max)
The Ruling Class, Trafalgar Studios, 2015 (Sir Charles Gurney)
Henry V, Grandage Season, 2013 (Pistol)
SHEILA ATIM
Volpone, RSC 2015
Love’s Sacrifice, RSC 2015
The Jew of Malta, RSC 2015
CIARAN HINDS
Hamlet, The Barbican 2015 (Claudius)
FILM:
The Debt, 2011 (David)
JIM NORTON
Hamlet, The Barbican 2015 (Polonius)
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