Review: Dylan songs take new shape in stark, brittle ‘North Country’
Characters are often haunted by life in the chilling and unforgettable plays of Conor McPherson.
In “The Weir,” bruised souls cluster around a bar trading ghost stories to ward off the descending gloom. In the Tony-winning “Girl from the North Country,” downtrodden survivors of the Great Depression alternately cling to and rage against each other in small town 1934 Minnesota, occasionally breaking into song to dispel the blues.
Written and directed by the masterful Irish playwright (also known for “Shining City”), “Girl,” in its regional premiere at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Theatre, is an existential gem that’s both sparse and sublime in its staging, evoking a world that is sorrowful but beautiful in its bleakness.
Though it spins around the iconic songbook of Bob Dylan, this is the antithesis of the usual Broadway jukebox musical. There’s nothing here that smacks of singalong comfort food, the likes of “Mamma Mia!,” in this memorable tale of aridity and disenchantment writ large.
Hope doesn’t exist in this grim universe where black men go to jail for crimes they didn’t commit and a preacher (an explosive Jeremy Webb) is as likely to pick your pocket as say a prayer.
As Nick (the mournful John Schiappa), who runs the two-bit Duluth flophouse these rolling stones call home, puts it, love is no salvation here.
“You live too long, you see too much. It chips away at you. … How can you love someone who ain’t got a soul?”
To be sure, there are times when the dialogue and the songs seem to exist on two different planes, one mundane and the other supernatural. But at other times there’s an almost mystical act of conjuring onstage, a summoning of spiritual decay when all hopes are stripped away and only regret remains.
In this dark and brooding place, justice is a pipe dream. In this vision of Americana, whole families are casually thrown onto the street and the common man longs for a “strongman” to be President, someone who has “energy,” even if he’s in the wrong. Sound familiar?
Nick almost despises his wife Elizabeth (the magnetic Jennifer Blood), who suffers from dementia, while he longs for the widow Mrs. Neilsen (Carla Woods) and tries to keep a roof above their heads until he can marry off their adopted daughter, Marianne (Sharaé Moultrie) who is pregnant and black in an age when either condition could mean trouble.
The musical interludes blend hypnotic vocals with mesmerizing choreography that captures the bittersweet impulse of a town yearning to celebrate in the face of tragedy.
Blood’s harrowing rendition of “Like a Rolling Stone” forces you to hear the lyrics anew. Alan Ariano lends a gentle wryness to the narrator, Doc Walter. All of the songs, such as poignant “I Want You,” “Make You Feel My Love,” “Forever Young,” and “All Along the Watchtower,” feel reimagined with delicacy.
Shades of Thornton Wilder and John Steinbeck flicker in this elegy to the down and out, the dreamers and the sinners who lose everything, even their sense of themselves.
You won’t soon forget the fate of these vagabonds, huddled in the gloom, their voices thick with sadness, keening into the darkness, framed by fiddles and banjos.
Contact Karen D’Souza at karenpdsouza@yahoo.com.
‘GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY’
Book by Conor McPherson, music and lyrics by Bob Dylan, presented by BroadwaySF
Through: Aug. 18
Where: Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor St., San Francisco
Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes, one intermission
Tickets: $59-$150; 888-746-1799, www.broadwaysf.com