BROADWAY FOR KIDS

The recent musical Girl From the North Country is unexpected.  Ostensibly a “juke Box” musical featuring (mostly) lesser-known Bob Dylan songs, it eschews traditional tropes of the genre, quickly establishing a melancholy mood and a thirties radio-broadcast style.  Yes, there are tightly choreographed group numbers, many belt-to-the-rafters vocal fireworks, with actors dropping into and out of character depending on the needs of the choral and instrumental accompaniment.  But there are no apparent “end of number” buttons that cue audience applause, and the plot seems more concerned with character and subtext than incident and conflict (though there is no shortage of incident or conflict).  Worse, I’d read some Facebook opinions of folks who hated the show in New York, some of whom even walked out.

 

Coming on the heels of the movie success of the bio-pic A Complete Unknown (not to mention a Nobel Prize for Literature), Dylan is in the zeitgeist, and PBS Great Performances adds to that ethos with an endearing and lyrical broadcast of the show, featuring many from the Broadway cast, including familiar faces from stage and screen.  To be perfectly honest, I was slow to warm to this.  I was familiar with only a handful of the songs, with most of the ”semi-complete unknown” numbers slipping into one ear and immediately out of my mind.  But I was impressed with the talent on display, the details selling a depression-era milieu, the arrangements that made Dylan’s sixties-infused lyrics sound as if they belonged in a depression-era radio studio, the moody libretto by novelist Conor McPherson.  So, I watched it a second time.  This time the entire show crept under my skin and left me with the satisfied (and rare) feeling of time twice-well spent.

 

Rather than the lyrics from the titular song cited above, which, truth to tell, is only tangentially referred to and is more motif and subtext, I like to think the song “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” is a better “backbone” out of which this musical grows (see sample lyrics below).  It could be described as an irony that this song is not part of the score, but I’m more inclined to think it was left out to avoid making this theme less explicit, more get-under-your skin subtle.  

 

Because Girl From the North Country  is set during the depression, these characters are survivors, resilient travelers through the back country of an America betrayed by capitalism.  Not everyone survives, including a narrator who whimsically describes his own passing, but all find the fortitude to meet and encounter circumstance that wouldn’t know fortune unless it were ill. 

 

It is 1934, Duluth Minnesota, a boarding house for transients, most of whom struggle to pay the rent, resulting in an owner/landlord facing foreclosure. Dr. Walker  (Robert Joy) is the physician who cares for the property owner, Nick Laine (Jay O. Sanders), whose wife, Elizabeth (Mare Winningham) suffers from what we (today) would recognize as Bipolar Disorder, alternating between bouts of catatonia and manic explosions of whimsical absurdity.  Their son, Gene (Colin Bates) is an aspiring writer with no ambition to find any other work (and whose girlfriend Kate – Caitlin Houlihan -- has opted for a more dependable mate).  Their adopted daughter, Marianne (Kimber Elaine Sprawl), is 19 and pregnant from an unknown father, and, as a Depression-era African-American raised in a white home in Minnesota (she was abandoned in the house as an infant), has only the prospect of an arranged marriage to an old (and not uncreepy)  Mr. Perry, a shoe shop owner.  Passing through the house are Mrs. Neilsen (Jeanette Bayardelle) who is waiting on a large inheritance to clear the courts, and who may (just may) soon be in a position to erase the Laine’s Mortgage debt (as long as Mr. Laine continues his illicit {Deleted by the Spoiler Police}.  Also staying at the house are the Burkes, a formerly comfortable businessman who lost everything in the crash, his wife Laura, and their son Elias, who is “on the spectrum” (Craig Bierko, Luba Mason, and Todd Almond).  Also coming through are a pair of itinerants, Joe Scott (Austin Scott), a boxer with a mysterious past, and the Reverend Marlowe (Matt McGrath), a bible salesman who may (just may) be a con man.

 

What happens when these disparate characters meet and interact, form attractions and enmities, explore (and ignore) mysteries of the past and future, is the tapestry that Mr. McPherson weaves in this heartfelt piece, underscored by the most elegant lyrics that Dylan put to melody (thanks to Tony-winning orchestrations by Simon Hale).  Mysteries are ignored, prejudices are unspoken,  secrets are buried deeper, betrayals are laid bare, tragedies are inevitable.  And running through all the stories, all the characters is an undeniable resilience that is only hinted at by the absence of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”

 

Unlike other “juke box” musicals that seem to shoehorn familiar songs into a contrived story that makes one regret they just didn’t do the songs as a “cover” concert (Five Guys Named Moe is my least favorite example of this trope), Girl From the North Country goes out of its way to make the music an integral part of the story, the characters.  Yes, we (occasionally) nod in recognition of the songs, but Dylan’s performing voice is so distinct, it is removed enough from what we hear here that we accept the score as new, almost original. 

 

I was very much impressed from the from-the-gut performances by Ms. Sprawl, Mr. Joy, Ms. Houlahan, Ms. Bayardelle, Mr. Sanders, and (especially) Mr. Almond (who gives Elias an innocence and kindness that makes a rousing up-beat number like “Duquesne Whistle” breathlessly heartbreaking. I also appreciated Luba Mason’s Mrs. Burke, who carries her prickly character into her occasional forays behind the drums adding an angry rhythm to what would normally be simple accompaniment.   

 

But it is Mare Winningham who is most memorable here.  I have been impressed through the years by some of her on-screen appearances (St. Elmo’s Fire, Miracle Mile, and American Horror Story), but here , she shows musical chops that underscore her eccentric character’s illness, showing us a fully formed, fully layered character in the direst of circumstances, who retains a core of sanity that is undeniable  She earned a much-deserved Tony nomination for her work here.  As she works her way through “Forever Young,” she positively steals our hearts, and make us yearn for a “happier ending” to her story.  It becomes Elizabeth‘s anthem to resilience.

 

I could go into more detail about how the songs illuminate the characters, how they progress the story, how they make us forget their roots in the Greenwich Village folk scene of the sixties (as brilliantly illustrated in A Complete Unknown).  Yes, ex-boxer Joe Scott is given “Hurricane,” but his story parallels “Hurricane” Carter’s so closely(maybe) it feels natural.

 

Much of your reaction to Girl From the North Country may depend on your affection for Dylan’s music.  I’ve always appreciated Dylan’s writing talent, but a bit leery about his performance style.  The only Dylan album I have is called “A Nod to Bob,” which is really a collection of his “hits” covered by everyone EXCEPT Dylan himself.  I also must confess that I liked Timothée Chalamet’s covers more than the originals.   That being said, this musical made me appreciate the TOTAL Dylan, the songs and the singer.

 

More to the point, Girl From the North Country made me appreciate how the “Juke Box Musical” has evolved into an art form unto itself, a new look at songs we thought we knew, illuminating the human spirit in ways a simple coffee house concert could never conceive.  It may have taken two viewings to get to that appreciation, but it was well worth the trip.  I will be exploring more of the Dylan songbook as well as his library of “not-so-complete-unknown” songs, sooner rather than later. Some great songs’re a-gonna fall! 

 

    --  Brad Rudy  (BKRudy@aol.com    #PBSGreatPerformances     #GirlFromTheNorthCountry)

 

 

Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

                  -Bob Dylan   “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”

 

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/girl-from-the-north-country/16706/