<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019re in 1930s Minnesota \u2014 a bleak time of the Great Depression. The heavy waters of vast Lake Duluth, bankruptcies, poverty, despair. What does any of this have to do with Bob Dylan? Everything: his childhood unfolded near Lake Duluth. It\u2019s a place that\u2019s almost always cold, damp, and dark \u2014 harsh climate, harsh life. The lake in Girl From the North Country<\/em> is a full-fledged character in its own right, with its own will and mood. The hotel owner, Nick Laine (Colin Connor), is drowning in debt; the building will soon be seized. His wife Elizabeth \u2014 raw nerve and broken porcelain \u2014 is suffering from early dementia. She peers out from between the slats of illness like a fragile pearl, but those slats close tighter and tighter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their hapless son (Colin Bates) \u2014 a drunkard and poet \u2014 is losing the love of his life. Their adopted daughter, Marianne (Justina Kehinde), stunningly beautiful, is pregnant by a man she won\u2019t name. The Burke family \u2014 mother, father, and their adult son Elias (Steffan Harri) \u2014 are odd in their own way: Elias behaves like a 3-year-old, always smiling beneath a suffocating knitted vest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But musical theatre, by nature, doesn\u2019t allow the actors to break fully into drama \u2014 or into tragedy. The rigid timing (damn it!) permits just one pin in the carefully stitched fabric of Dylan\u2019s songs. There\u2019s no time to add folds or deepen the seams. A Dylan song. Then a short dramatic scene that nudges the plot forward. All of this is strung along the narration by Dr. Walker (Chris McHallem), who stands calmly at a vintage mic in a noir-style fedora, recounting this tale the way a doctor might present a case at a clinical meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Song \u2013 drama \u2013 song \u2013 drama. With each number, the lighting shifts; actors\u2019 faces glow with strange beauty as they gather around vintage microphones in warm amber twilight. And poor Elias \u2014 he suddenly becomes sharp, mature, ironic, pulling a harmonica from his pocket. It\u2019s no longer a toy, but an instrument \u2014 a clear homage to Dylan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The songs have been rearranged, of course \u2014 but that very unfamiliar sound is the link between the 1930s and the 1960s, when most of them were written. The atmosphere thickens with each stitch, each song, each set change. Sheer curtains rise and fall, revealing either bleak Minnesota landscapes or dingy hotel interiors. A table at center stage appears and disappears. It should symbolize togetherness \u2014 mealtimes, quiet conversation \u2014 but here, it evokes something else entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the guests gather around the table for Thanksgiving, a dreadful sense of doom thickens in the air \u2014 you can almost touch it. And yes \u2014 thunder cracks, sudden and brutal. The tragic core becomes the brilliant Mrs. Burke and her husband \u2014 the bearded Mr. Burke, who maintains a shred of elegance even in ruin (David Ganly). Ganly, a gifted dramatic actor, plays with subtlety and inward power. He builds his character\u2019s arc carefully, within the narrow confines of a musical. And we witness the tragedy of his son through the prism of his own dark relief \u2014 a crime born of grief and panic. But then \u2014 snap! \u2014 a cut to the next moment, and suddenly the couple is packing to leave the inn, as if memories were erased. As if nothing happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And of course, the main demon here is the traveling Bible salesman \u2014 Marlowe. He arrives in the middle of a storm. Lightning flashes across his sharp face, thunder roars ominously. Eugene McCoy, who just played a stellar Prince Andrei in Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 at the Donmar, now appears at The Old Vic as Marlowe. With his jack-in-the-box energy, you distrust him instantly. Sloped shoulders, slicked-back black hair, a condor\u2019s profile, a stalking gait. The character is vivid, precise, and unmistakably drawn. No one believes him \u2014 but no one has the strength to resist. Everyone is too burdened by their own demons. He is, of course, a classic trickster \u2014 and just as classically, vanishes with the storm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s something here of a Russian play from the early 20th century \u2014 Gorky\u2019s The Lower Depths \u2014 and of Eugene O\u2019Neill\u2019s The Iceman Cometh. It\u2019s a wandering, haunted narrative. And where better to gather broken souls than a failing hotel?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of the musical\u2019s structural rigidity, the audience never fully sinks into the characters\u2019 inner pain. Instead, we watch from a slight distance \u2014 as if from the far shore of the icy Lake Duluth. Where will they go? What will happen to them? How will the winds scatter them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The final word belongs to the Laine family \u2014 husband and wife. And here, it becomes clear: the true central character is Elizabeth Laine. This is her story \u2014 her descent into illness, as into the icy depths of the lake. Katie Brayben plays her with fearless physicality \u2014 at times childlike, at times monstrous. Then suddenly, she becomes magnetic \u2014 not a sea siren, but a lake siren. McPherson writes her like Homer wrote his. Wild, chthonic Elizabeth with a trembling knife in her delicate hand suddenly turns soft, golden, playful. The shell of her mind opens and closes \u2014 and we\u2019re left unsure where the real Elizabeth is. When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose This is a reunion \u2014 a return of the 2017 sensation. Girl From the North Country once swept up awards, nominations, and full houses on tour. Its author \u2014 the playwright, director, and storyteller behind the entire stage tapestry combining the Great Depression and Bob Dylan\u2019s songs \u2014 is Conor McPherson, whose latest play The Brightening Air was recently staged at The Old Vic with great success. And now, McPherson brings back his hit jukebox musical \u2014 directing it once again himself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":51669,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"type_post":[184],"column":[185],"class_list":["post-52027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","column-letters-from-the-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52027"},{"taxonomy":"type_post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_post?post=52027"},{"taxonomy":"column","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/column?post=52027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
On stage stands a shabby guesthouse. In its rooms live boarders \u2014 fragments of who they used to be. Each carries their own catastrophe. These people are the generation of Dylan\u2019s parents \u2014 and somewhere in the womb of the innkeeper\u2019s daughter, a future Dylan-like child grows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stuff a group of desperate people into a godforsaken guesthouse like mice in a jar \u2014 and see what happens. Remember the famous experiment? Mice were placed in a terrarium and sealed with a transparent lid. At first they jumped and scratched, trying to escape, but the lid blocked them. Then the lid was removed \u2014 and yet neither the mice nor their offspring ever tried to get out again. The invisible barrier remained. That\u2019s what learned helplessness looks like \u2014 and that\u2019s what Girl From the North Country<\/em> is really about. Who will break free, and who will remain trapped? O you, enchanted lake! Everyone is fragile here; there\u2019s so much love, so much damage \u2014 no whole hearts remain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Poor, poor Dr. Walker \u2014 what a difficult patient he had. A life that resonates so deeply with Dylan\u2019s iconic lyrics:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
You’re invisible now, you’ve got no secrets to conceal
How does it feel, ah how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"