Girl From the North Country review: Lightning doesn’t strike twice
When Conor McPherson’s Girl From the North Country was first staged in 2017, its combination of foot-tapping Bob Dylan arrangements and depression-era drama made it a critical and popular darling.
It returns eight years later with a new cast, at least one new song (added during its run on Broadway) and more of the same wistful, whiskey soaked Americana. It’s a funny old musical, part paean to Bob Dylan, part homage to the great American playwrights Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, part ensemble drama of the sort McPherson has made his stock in trade.
It takes place in Duluth, the Minnesota town where Bob Dylan was born, although it’s set in 1934, seven years before he was born. The action centres around the Laine family’s peeling, soon-to-be-repossessed boarding house, which plays host to various waifs and strays: a down-on-his-luck boxer, a suspicious bible-salesman, a morphine-addicted neighbour, the owner’s dementia-addled wife, his long-suffering lover, his wayward son, his pregnant adopted daughter. The list goes on and on and on. We never really get to know any of these characters, rather they blend into a sad tapestry of life in this gruelling dustbowl, a place where dreams go to die and racism is never more than a drink or two away.
It’s all presented against a stunning backdrop of elegiac photographs projected behind the stage like distant memories. Characters are beautifully framed in warm, orange spotlights, captured for a moment like motes of dust in a sunbeam before drifting away.
The use of songs written decades later adds to the hazy, dreamy atmosphere, in which everything feels slightly out of time. If you’re not a Dylan aficionado, you won’t recognise many of the 20-something songs in the book, although you’ll certainly know hits including Like a Rolling Stone, Forever Young and Make You Feel My Love. The singing is rich and warm, the voices of people living resolutely in the moment – powerful and a little heartbreaking.
But I can’t help feeling like I’m missing something. Even during Girl From the North Country’s most soulful moments I found myself appreciating rather than enjoying it. There’s something about the sprawling structure and out-of-time tunes that keeps the audience at arm’s length. So much happens that the emotional weight of any one thread is swallowed by the collective grief. Who’s to say why Girl From the North Country hits differently after eight years but lightning, sadly, doesn’t strike twice.