We saw it the night after the General Election and as I was in a deep depression I figured nothing would shift my humour but it was actually the perfect show for my state, it lifted me up with excellent ensemble work, fine individual performances, and the chance to have a quiet weep in the dark. Four years ago, Irish playwright Conor McPherson was approached by Bob Dylan's record company with the suggestion of turning some of his back catalogue into a stage musical but McPherson - known for his powerful dramas which are haunted by unseen malign influences such as THE WEIR - politely refused. He had never attempted a musical before and couldn't see how Dylan's work would fit into one.
But it preyed on his mind and the idea came to him of setting it in the Minnesota of 1934 (where Dylan would be born seven years later) - a mix of John Steinbeck and Southern Gothic. He contacted the record company and soon received an e-mail saying Dylan gave the idea a green light and promptly sent him 40 Dylan albums with permission to use any of them in whatever style he wanted, which is wonderfully trusting for such a musical figure. McPherson knew he wanted the music to be played on instruments used in 1934 and working closely with orchestrator and arranger Simon Hale, he has certainly achieved a very individual sound. Some purists have argued that songs sound unlike the Dylan originals but it shows how protean the material is which spans from the 1960s onwards and includes a healthy dollop of 1970s and 1980s album tracks... no jukebox musical here.
All the action centres on a ramshackle Duluth boarding house run by husband and wife Nick and Elizabeth Laine, but the bank is threatening to foreclose on it and Elizabeth is slowly submerging into early dementia. Their son Gene aspires to be a writer but drinks more than he types, and their adopted black daughter Marianne - abandoned as a baby by a non-paying guest - stoically nurses Elizabeth and acts as general housemaid to the guests.
One of their guests is Mrs Neilson, a widow who is waiting for her husband's will to be finalized; she and Nick are clandestine lovers who dream of running away to set up their own hotel with her inheritance. The only other guests are Mr and Mrs Burke - living in reduced circumstances thanks to the Depression - and their retarded son Elias. Marianne is five months pregnant but refuses to divulge the father's identity; her adopted father Nick is attempting a 'deal' with the local - and aged - shoe-peddler Mr Perry to marry Marianne for the companionship she will offer, but Marianne resists this arrangement.
One stormy night, two new guests - Reverend Marlowe and Joe Scott - arrive at the rooming house: the former says he is an itinerant holier-than-thou bible-seller and the other a black one-time-contender boxer but are they? Life over the coming months gets no easier for the occupants of the boarding house until it culminates in Nick and Elizabeth alone at their dining table with the audience on the edge of their seats...
It sounds grim and, in places, it was - McPherson again shadows characters with the unforgettable trauma of dead children - and the action builds to an unbearably tense peak as Nick sees a way out, but the characters are all written in such a humane, non-judgmental way that you are drawn into their sad little stories, hoping for a resolution for them that will make life better. The whole story is narrated occasionally by the town doctor who knows most of the occupants' secrets and a few of his own, in a style reminiscent of The Stage Director in Thornton Wilder's OUR TOWN: he tells the story but is also one step ahead of the action to describe their later lives.
In a nod to the radio days of the 1930s, the solos are sung into old radio microphones which gives the impression that these numbers are more to do with what is happening in the character's minds than simply singing a song to someone. As I said, the idea of an evening of Bob Dylan songs once had me running a mile from the show but McPherson has chosen songs that were all fairly new to me - at best I knew five of the twenty listed songs - but they are woven so well into the fabric of the story and in the unified sound of Hale's 1930s instruments, that three in particular had me hooked: TIGHT CONNECTION TO MY HEART, SWEETHEART LIKE YOU and TRUE LOVE TENDS TO FORGET.
Conor McPherson directs the show beautifully, always keeping an air of fragile unease while eliciting a wonderful ensemble performance from his 19 cast members but I particularly want to mention the marvellous work of Katie Brayben as the mentally lost Elizabeth, a difficult role to place as most of it she spends glowering at the world from her chair but rising to deliver scorching versions of LIKE A ROLLING STONE - growling through the song of her now untethered life - and a heartbreaking FOREVER YOUNG; Anna-Jane Casey as the secretly doped-up Mrs Burke (and occasional drummer); Rachel John who is wonderfully sympathetic as Mrs Neilsen and in excellent voice; Finbar Lynch's weaselly Reverend Marlowe; Donald Sage Mackay's quietly despairing Nick; Gloria Obiyanyo's secretive and wary Marianne with a voice that sounds like a mix of Tracy Chapman and Joan Armatrading, and Shaq Taylor's proud boxer Joe Scott. All this and Gemma Sutton too in an all-too-brief role as Gene's departing girlfriend.
Rae Smith's designs are as spare and lean as the Minnesota dust bowl while Mark Henderson delivers another masterclass in story-telling through lighting. A special mention too for the four-man onstage band who weave such a great musical backdrop throughout the show.
GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY is on at the Gielgud until 1st February - run to see this truly remarkable show of people's power to love and endure...
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