Girl From The North Country at Bristol Hippodrome
What do you get when you take the lyrics and music of perhaps the greatest singer songwriter we have ever known, the work of a Noble Laureate no less, and of a man that knows his way around a protest song or two. Then combine this with the storytelling prowess of one of the best contemporary Irish playwrights of our time, a Laurence Olivier Award winner and a man who cites James Joyce and Stanley Kubrick as two of his great heroes?
The answer is the Girl From The North Country, an intense and deeply moving depression era story of everyday folks in the port city of Duluth, Minnesota struggling to survive. A show featuring some 20 songs from its most famous son, yes, you’ve probably guessed it by now, Bob Dylan, now expertly woven into a two and a half hour stage show by the talent that is Conor McPherson.
Notoriously private, it comes as something of a surprise that it was actually Dylan who reached out to McPherson to write the story that expertly weaves the master musicians tales into the narrative of the musical, and what a job it is that he has done.
Don’t come to the show expecting an uplifting evening, after all, the story is all about struggling working people trying to just get by in difficult times whilst the spectre of both financial ruin and racism, which ran rife in America at the time, and some will argue still does to this day, runs large in the background.
But don’t for one minute think that this makes for a miserable night out – far from it – it’s an absorbing watch, told with skill, and performed by a cast that have clearly honed their parts and earned their chops on the long UK tour that the production is currently on.
A sparse set adds to the atmosphere as we are introduced to the main protagonists at their boarding house in the city, run by Nick (played here by Colin Connor). Nick is facing financial problems and foreclosure from the bank whilst struggling to look after his wife Elizabeth (Frances McNamee) who is in the throes of dementia.
To add to his problems, his son dreams of being a writer whilst wiling his days away staring down the bottom of a bottle and his coloured, adopted daughter, abandoned in the guest house whilst just a baby, is now pregnant and refuses to say who the father is. She is resisting Nick’s attempts to marry her off to the much older Mr Perry. If that wasn’t enough, he’s also conducting an affair in plain sight with one of the guests, Mrs Nielsen a glamourous coloured widow who is waiting on an inheritance with which they have dreams of disappearing and buying an establishment of their own.
But as you would expect, not all is as it seems, as characters interweave themselves into the narrative, most of them just passing through the guest house. There’s Mr & Mrs Burke and son, Elias, who are a deeply troubled family and have fallen on hard times, Joe, the former boxer who is on the run and the sinister Reverend Marlow who is just out for everything he can get.
The story is told through the narrative with the musicians forming part of the ensemble delving deep into some of the lesser known parts of Dylan’s cannon. The arrangements are not always what you would expect, but then anyone who has seen the great man on his never ending world tour will know that that is exactly how he likes it. But thanks to the skill of the musicians and the cast they work.
Frances McNamee as Elizabeth is excellent, at times sharp as a pin, at others deeply confused, but however lucid or otherwise she is, it is hard to take your eyes off her, if only for the fact that you never know quite what she is going to do or say next!
Justina Kehinde is impressive as Marianne as she refuses to be told what to do, determined to make her own choices in life despite the barriers that are clearly holding her back, and plays her character with just the right amount of empathy, whilst Joshua C Jackson as Joe is a gentle soul, just trying to survive the best he can despite the problems that life has put in front of him.
But it’s the songs and their performance by cast and ensemble that really make the show and knit everything together. These routines are perhaps the most atmospheric and emotive parts of the show and are presented in such a way that, with a little imagination, transports you all the way back to 1934!
This is a show that’s garnered five star reviews from the critics and you can see why – it’s well worth seeing – certainly not a laugh out loud show at all, but sometimes a night out is not about laughs – and this is one of those nights!
Girl From The North Country is at Bristol Hippodrome until 04 February and then goes on to visit Birmingham, Belfast, Aberdeen, Norwich and Leicester ending its current run at the New Wimbledon Theatre. For more information and tickets follow this link.
