| Sublime |
The Girl from the North Country |
| Runaway Entertainment, the Old Vic & Partners , Wales Millennium Centre , December 8, 2022 |
“The Girl from the North Country” comes to Cardiff weighted with expectation. Its opening in the summer of 2017 was met with a critical acclaim that ran to ecstasy. Five stars from the heavyweight critics are rarely given. The production was showered with them.In the interim years it has been seen in New York City, Toronto, Sydney, Melbourne. So expectations are high. They were met in full; “the Girl from the North Country” is sublime theatre with music. Theatre-with-music or theatre-of-music are better descriptions than musical. The actors break from dialogue into a Bob Dylan lyric in a seamless flow of action. It is as if the thoughts are occurring to them. With a last note sung Conor McPherson’s direction returns to speech at speed. There is no opportunity for mid-performance applause. The emphasis on flow is paramount. Conor McPherson was approached by the team-of-Dylan to write and direct theatre with twenty of the songs. The result is not just pure McPherson but the songs are reformed as to be different from their inimitable first recordings. A scene of unexpressed love leads into “I Want You.” “The cracked bells and washed-out horns/ Blow into my face with scorn/ But it's not that way/ I wasn't born to lose you”. The phrasing of “I want you, I want you” is slowed from the original. “How does it feel?” from “Like a Rolling Stone” is repeated, the words again slowed for extra impact. “Hurricane” is sung by Joshua C Jackson as convict-on-the-run Joe Scott. The original is too long so it is blended with a verse from “All Along the Watchtower”. The bleakness of that song merges into “Idiot Wind.” The company is big, nineteen, and they form and reform into soloists, duets, backing groups of five. Rebecca Thornhill as Mrs Burke takes a lead while providing her own percussion at a drum-set. Great writing is haunted with cadences from elsewhere. Maria Omakinwa's Mrs Neilsen says that money is due that will save all. Like the fugitive money in “Juno and the Paycock” it is never to be. Chris McHallem's Dr Walker is a narrator whose words frame the action. Like the narrator in Wilder's “Our Town” he knows the fates that await all whom he watches. One, he tells us, is to meet his end eleven years later on the battle beaches of Okinawa. McPherson’s setting is a world turned-around from Wilder's domestic Grover's Corners. They are of the same time. Wilder wrote his play in 1938. The year for McPherson’s Duluth, Minnesota is 1934. It is a place with a seven month winter. The great Crash is fresh in the memory. Colin Connor's Nick Laine remembers the hunger queues, the tent cities, the epidemic of suicides. In 1934 he is owner of a boarding house, a dramatic device for gatherings and arrivals of strangers. He is little gifted as a manager and foreclosure is due in two months time. This Duluth is a place of transit. Characters move on: a role as a governess in Boston, a job as a maid in St Louis, the factories of Chicago, the refuge of a sister's home in Oklahoma all await. For a day and a couple of nights the group can cross-over. McPherson theads his characters in and out of the foreground with the deftness of a theatre craftsman with decades of accomplishment behind him. There are no winners in life's lottery here. “Freedom is just around the corner for you” runs a line from “Jokerman” and there it will stay. The group includes a dementia victim, a penniless would-be writer, a predatory man of religion, a girl in mid-pregnancy, an apparent killer. They gather in their place of shelter from a harsh world outside. The Klan locally has a history of ferocity. Even in 1934 Scott says “They'll kill you if you don't mind your own business.” For all the isolation and unfulfilled purpose the characters come together to eat. Jez Butterworth did the same with his huge cast in “the Ferryman”. McPherson has set the time for November so the action morphs into Thanksgiving. A last tableau has the light fading on a quartet at a meal in silence. The stage of the Millennium Centre is big. Mark Henderson’s lighting design casts its depths into pools of shadows. Rae Smith's costume design is one of depression-era clothing in muted colours. Within the credits Lucy Hind as movement director is crucial. The movements of Frances McNamee's Elizabeth are exceptional. The emotions are there in the dramatic interactions. But the lyrics again and again raise them. From “Love in Vain”: “I'll take a chance, I will fall in love with you...Do you understand my pain? Are you willing to risk it all? Or is you love in vain ?” If there were to be one moment to select it would be early on. Justina Kehinde's Marianne Laine sings “Has anybody seen my love?” Sheila Atim had the role magnificently in the first production. Justina Kehinde is her equal in wringing all the yearning from the lines: “I'm gonna get my coat I feel the breath of a storm There's something I've got to do tonight You go inside and stay warm. Has anybody seen my love? Has anybody seen my love?” |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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