Evan Zimmerman
The Tony Award winning musical Girl from the North Country has picked up it stakes on Broadway and is now making its way not just to the North of the country, but the East, South and West as well. The musical had its premiere in London in 2017, then transferred to Off-Broadway in 2018, before finally settling on Broadway in 2020 where it earned seven Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical, winning one for Best Orchestration (well earned). The show could be described as a ‘jukebox musical’ in that the songs featured in the musical have been culled from the early Bob Dylan catalog. But this isn’t a Mamma Mia! where the plot is shoehorned in around the music. Girl from the North Country is more of a dramatic play with musical interludes.
The show is set in Dylan’s hometown, Duluth, Minnesota, in November and December of 1934 as Americans are still dealing with the effects of the Great Depression. The story is set entirely in a boarding house run by Nick Laine, a man in dire financial straits who is about to lose his property. Nick has a wife, Elizabeth, who is suffering from the early onset of dementia complete with wild mood swings and moments of stunning clarity. Son Gene is an alcoholic who can’t find a job while fancying himself a writer (and is dealing with the heartbreak of his girlfriend leaving Duluth for someone with better options for the future), and adopted daughter Marianne is nineteen and pregnant. She’s also African-American but seems to be accepted by the guests if not by the unseen denizens of Duluth (there is mention of Klan activity in the area though). Trying to hold on to everything he owns, Nick basically makes a financial deal with Mr. Perry, an elderly local businessman, to marry Marianne so she’ll have someone to take care of her and her baby. Marianne, who keeps the identity of the father a secret — save for one description that can only be described as supernatural — is none-too-pleased to be treated like property to be sold.
The guests include Mrs. Neilsen, a widow awaiting her late husband’s will to be finalized so she can go into business with Nick while having a not-so secret affair with him; the formerly well-to-do Burke family, who have basically lost everything in the stock market crash and also have to contend with a mentally impaired son who may or may not have committed murder (which is why the Burkes are in Duluth, perhaps under an assumed name); and Joe Scott, a former boxer, and Reverend Marlowe, a shady Bible salesman, who arrive in the middle of the night. The Laine family doctor, Dr. Walker, serves mainly as the show’s Our Town-inspired narrator. The story depicts their lives under the roof of the boarding house with drama, humor, pathos and tragedy, ultimately leaving us with many questions by the end. Like … who exactly is the ‘Girl from the North Country’?
Evan Zimmerman
Girl from the North Country is truly an ensemble piece and all of the actors fully embody their characters. It’s difficult to single out any one performer since they all work together like a well-oiled machine, but I will give a few shout-outs in no particular order. Jennifer Blood normally plays Elizabeth but Kelly McCormick took to the stage at our performance and totally steals the show. Of course it is the flashiest role because she gets to run through a gamut of emotions and behaviors, from refusing to eat, to getting dressed and waving at imaginary passersby, and being quite blunt about her husband’s affair … while still being the best of friends with Mrs. Neilsen. She also deeply loves Marianne, and the two have a strong bond throughout the show. And when she sings, it’s heavenly. Sharaé Moultrie is in the role of Marianne but Rayla Garske filled in at our performance and was terrific as the glue that is really holding the Laine family together. However, temptation comes along in the form of Joe Scott (normally Matt Manuel, but Swing Warren Nolan Jr. appeared at our performance) who, after knowing Marianne for such a short time, wants her to leave Duluth with him for Chicago (but Joe seems a little too good to be true and Marianne is no dummy). She also possesses a powerful voice that you could listen to all night.
Ben Biggers as Gene manages to make us care about a character who doesn’t even care for himself, and his duet with girlfriend Kate (‘I Want You’) shows off his beautiful voice. Jill Van Velzer was also terrific and moving as Mrs. Burke … and she can play a mean set of drums too. I have questions about Jeremy Webb’s performance as Reverend Marlowe, always yelling his lines, arriving at the house with a dirty face and leaving the house with the same dirty face. Aiden Wharton as Elias Burke does a fine job of not making the character a caricature with his mental disability — and becomes downright scary at one point — but he gets a big number in Act 2 that’s uplifting and terribly sad at the same time. And his harmonica solo was pretty amazing. Carla Woods is also outstanding as Mrs. Neilsen. She along with Marianne are holding the household together, and Woods makes her a sharp, no-nonsense woman, and she has a powerful voice as well.
The show itself has a lot going on as it introduces each new character and puts them all into a blender as they deal with each other living under one roof. It’s not a story that has a clear-cut beginning, middle and end because we’re really coming into the middle of things, and a lot of them are not satisfactorily resolved. Who is the father of Marianne’s baby? We don’t know. Which of them is the Girl of the title … or is it any of them? Dr. Walker shows up at the end to fill us in on what happens to the Laine family in the future but I’m still not sure if Marianne went to live with Mr. Perry or Joe or just went off on her own. She did have the baby though. Even with all of the ambiguousness of the story, I was still engaged because of the stunning amount of talent on the stage. And I have to admit, I did feel my eyes well up a bit in the show’s final moments.
Evan Zimmerman
Director Conor McPherson and Movement Director Lucy Hind have done an amazing job of conducting the cast like an orchestra, moving them on and off stage smoothly, bringing them together to act as back-up singers many times during the show. The Scenic & Costume Design is by Rae Smith. The costumes are period appropriate, nothing flashy except for perhaps Mrs. Burke’s blazing red dress, an emblem of her former status. The physical part of the set is a lot of tables and chairs, moved about on the stage by the cast. What is cool about the set are the walls that glide up and down to give us various configurations of rooms in the house, which when lit seem solid but are often backlit to show some business going on in another room. There is also a large video wall at the back which is used to occasionally depict a lake or the town itself. It’s not the glitziest show, but it is still visually interesting. The lighting by Mark Henderson is sometimes a bit too dark, perhaps to reflect that the house is not well-lit, but it often results in obscuring one side of an actor’s face. If I have one major quibble with the show, it’s the sound design by Simon Baker. Whenever Dr. Walker did his narration to the audience, his voice was often muffled, making it difficult to hear his dialogue. Warren Nolan Jr. was barely audible, and even the clearer voices often dropped to levels that were difficult to hear. The only actor we could hear clearly was Webb, because he shouted his lines all the time. There are also a few times when an old radio is turned on and the music from that was often louder than the actors, to the point that I wanted to get out of my seat, walk to the stage and turn it off myself. For a show that has a lot of dialogue, it’s imperative that we hear the actors’ voices.
Where the show shines, though, is in the music. Simon Hale’s reorchestrations of Dylan’s music, using period instruments, is breathtaking and very deserving of that Tony Award win. I’m not a Dylan fan, and I didn’t know the bulk of the songs save for ‘Slow Train’, ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, and ‘All Along the Watchtower’, but this presentation of his songs was truly remarkable. They don’t really fit the show’s narrative since they weren’t written that way, serving more as a character’s interior monologue, but it didn’t matter because the music, the band on stage who were characters in the show in their own right, and the magnificent voices made it all work.
I may still be perplexed by Girl from the North Country, but there is enough charisma on that stage, a group of powerful vocalists, a visually interesting set design for me to say that maybe you should give it a try. Hopefully the sound issues will be worked out!
Girl from the North Country runs about 2 hours and 30 minutes with an intermission. Recommended for ages 12 and up.
Girl From The North Country runs through December 31 at Wasington DC’s Kennedy Center. Other cities on the schedule include Durham, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Nashville, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Tampa, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and more. Visit the official website for more information. Use our Ticketmaster link to purchase tickets.
The Kennedy Center
Check our Ticketmaster link for ticket availability.
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