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REVIEW: Girl From The North Country, “the Bob Dylan musical” knockin’ on heaven or hell’s door at York Theatre Royal *****

An ensemble scene in the Duluth boarding house in Girl From The North Country. Picture: Johan Persson

THERE has been a previous Bob Dylan musical: a dance one set “somewhere between awake and asleep” in a dreamy circus of clowns and contortionists, spun around a coming-of-age conflict by director-choreographer Twyla Tharp.

Would it surprise you to learn that the Broadway run of The Times They Are A-Changin’ ground to a halt after only 35 previews and 28 performances in November 2006?

Girl From The North Country just sounds more apt: written and directed by Conor McPherson, elegiac Dublin playwright of The Weir, who had been sent a box gift of 60 career-spanning Dylan CDs by Bob’s management with free rein to select songs to wrap his story around.

That story is set in Duluth, Minnesota, birthplace of one Robert Zimmerman, as The Depression weighed as heavy as stones on saint Margaret Clitherow, in the America of November 1934, a place of racism, broken businesses and abused women.

Eli James’s Reverend Marlowe works his salesman’s pitch on Ross Carswell’s Elias Burke in Girl From The North Country. Picture: Johan Persson

Nothing is glitzy about Rae Smith’s scenic staging: a boarding house of worn furniture and worn, lost souls, complemented by panoramic backdrops in black and white.

And yes, McPherson’s cast of 19 actor-musicians do dance, but, like the revolving door of stories blown in on the wind, the pace tends to be slow in Simon Hale’s orchestrations and arrangements, unhurried, some in waltz time, peppered with sporadic bursts of freewheelin’ joy and abandon.

Narrated by the local doctor, weaving his way in and out of the plot as much as the 20 Dylan songs, McPherson’s episodic drama of troubles past, present and in-bound, has the widowed, weary Dr Walker (Chris McHallem) guiding the to and fro of drifters and dreamers, scammers and schemers “trying to figure out their lives” as they pass through the welcome-all boarding house.

If one Dylan chorus were to sum up McPherson’s Eugene O’Neill-inspired story of dysfunctional families, love lost, love never found, and the dangers in strangers, it would be: “How does it feel, ah how does it feel/To be on your own, with no direction home/Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.”

Frances McNamee’s Elizabeth Laine and James Staddon’s Mr Burke. Picture: Johan Persson

There may be the hubhub of life, the constant interaction, and yet the abiding state of being is one of loneliness. On your own, even when surrounded. As sung by Elizabeth, the demented wife of exhausted, despairing, play-away proprietor Nick Laine (a tinderbox Colin Connor), Like A Rolling Stone is indeed “Dylan as you’ve never heard him sung before”, all the more so for the voice emanating from Frances McNamee, winner of the UK Theatre Award for her performance as Meg Dawson in Sting’s musical The Last Ship, as seen at York Theatre Royal in June 2018.

McNamee is even more remarkable here, drawing more tears at the finale in the hopeful Forever Young, and taking the acting honours too. Elizabeth, much more than the narrator, is the key voice of truth here, lacking a filter to tone down her thoughts. For all her madness, she is as unguarded, outspoken and eccentrically funny as a Shakespearean Fool. Her silences and juddering, impromptu dancing speak volumes too.

Significantly, to emphasise the loneliness of each character “standing at a turning point in their lives, searching for a future, hiding from the past and facing unspoken truths about the present”, each song is delivered from the front, directly to the audience, not to fellow characters.

This is particularly affecting in I Want To You, a duet where, side by side, the Laines’ writer son Gene (Gregor Milne in his outstanding professional debut) and Katherine Draper (Eve Norris) say what they could never express to each other or bring to fruition, blighted by  circumstance.

Writer-director Conor McPherson in rehearsal with James Staddon and Frances McNamee for Girl From The North Country. Picture: Johan Persson

McPherson talked of his “little stories” of failing men and the women they fail being like parables in the Bible, simple, human, rather than political statements, made meaningful by Dylan’s songs. They are, it should be said, made even more meaningful by multiple excellent performances that both devastate and uplift you.

Joshua C Jackson’s Joe Scott, a wrongly imprisoned black boxer seeking a new life, and Justina Kehinde’s Marianne, the Laines’ adopted black daughter, are particularly impactful. Nichola MacEvilly understudied most ably for Keisha Amponsa Banson as Mrs Neilsen on press night, and Teddy Kempner (Mr Perry), Ross Carswell (Elias Burke) and James Staddon’s insufferable Mr Burke add much to the torrid tales.

Far removed from the glut of jukebox musicals or the glittering campery of plenty more, Girl From The North Country is more in keeping with the emotional punch, the highs and the lows, the sadness and the joy of Billy Elliot, Once or Spring Awakening.

Oh, and who can resist the sight of Rebecca Thornhill’s heavy-drinking Mrs Burke playing drums in a red dress or Carswell’s nod to Dylan in playing the mouth organ?! Not forgetting a round of applause for the band, The Howlin’ Winds, especially Ruth Elder’s violin and mandolin.

Girl From The North Country runs at York Theatre Royal until tomorrow (10/9/2022). Performances: 7.30pm tonight; 2.30pm, 7.30pm tomorrow. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Further Yorkshire dates: Alhambra Theatre, Bradford, November 29 to December 3; Sheffield Lyceum Theatre, January 17 to 21.

Justina Kehinde’s Marianne Laine singing out front in Girl From The North Country. Picture: Johan Persson
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Girl From The North Country reimagines Bob Dylan’s songs “as you’ve never heard them before” in Depression-era musical

Writer-director Conor McPherson, second from right, directs a rehearsal for Girl From The North Country. All pictures: Johan Persson

BEFORE Irish writer-director Conor McPherson set to work on his first musical, Bob Dylan’s management company sent him a gift box. Inside were more than 60 CDs by the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature-winning American singer-songwriter.

What ensued in summer 2017 from the Dublin playwright of The Weir and The Seafarer was Girl From The North Country, the West End and Broadway hit with Olivier and Tony awards to its name, now on its debut tour, next Stop York Theatre Royal from Tuesday.

“It was Dylan’s office that approached me, so I had no idea for a musical or even a play at that stage,” Conor recalls. “I thought, ‘oh, that’s an unusual idea, and initially I was reluctant as I had no experience of doing musicals, but then I had this idea of a doing a Eugene O’Neil-style play set in Minnesota in the 1930s before Dylan was born, so it would be outside his time frame and not directly connected to him.  

“The Great Depression was happening, and I had this group of people gathered in a boarding house trying to figure out their lives. I went back to Dylan’s management; they spoke to Bob, who said he really liked it, and then it took off from there.”

McPherson duly constructed an elegiac, uplifting and universal story of family and poverty, love and loss that “boldly reimagines the legendary songs of Bob Dylan like you’ve never heard them before”.

The setting is 1934, when a group of wayward drifters and dreamers find their paths crossing in an enervated boarding house in Dylan’s hometown of Duluth, Minnesota. Standing at a turning point in their lives, they search for a future, hide from the past and face unspoken truths about the present.

An ensemble scene from Girl From The North Country

Interwoven into that story are more than 20 of Dylan’s songs. “I was firing into the dark. I’d seen some musicals but it wasn’t something I’d sought to do, but I’m a huge music fan, so using music on stage felt natural to me,” says Conor, who set about listening all 60 of those Dylan albums and was given free rein by Dylan to select songs.

“I knew a good body of Dylan’s work just from having some albums myself. They ranged from the albums of the Sixties to the Seventies, but I hadn’t really listened to much of his album work since then, so I’d listen to them on my walks by the sea, and if something struck me instinctively, if it spoke to me, I’d note it and then made a list of the songs I liked.”

Conor had no preconceptions about what made a song suitable for the musical format. Instead, he evaluated Dylan’s distinctive songwriting. “The thing about Dylan is that the majority of his songs are subjective, providing poetic images but leaving it to the listener to bring meaning and sense to them,” he says.

“That makes him more akin to a literary writer than a pop writer, and the advantage, to me, is that it allows songs to be very malleable as you can put them anywhere and they still mean something to somebody, so in this musical, they reflect each of the characters in different ways.” Perfect for a musical, as it turns out!

In a nutshell, Dylan’s songs have the ring of universality. “He manages to distil his subjective experience into something people relate to. It has the strange, odd contrariness of people’s real thoughts and it’s a language which allows us to transcend our normal way of thinking,” says Conor.

Whereas jukebox musicals are essentially a vehicle for the songs, Conor took a different approach: “We try and wrap our story around his music. Often, I think of them as parables from the Bible in a way, all the little stories that are in the show,” he says. “They are on a simple, human level, rather than being big political statements. It’s Dylan’s artistry that transforms it all into something meaningful.”

Girl From The North Country: “Searching for a future, hiding from the past and facing unspoken truths about the present”

When Girl From The North Country opened at the Old Vic, in London, in 2017, artistic director Matthew Warchus told Conor: ‘You’ve really ripped up the musical rule book’. I told him I didn’t know there was one! I wish someone had told me there was,” says Conor.

Such “innocence” worked to his advantage, however. “It’s a bit of a trap to think, ‘let’s do something that’s sure to be a big success’. If it were that easy, there’d just be a sound you’d recognise: ‘oh, that’s a Broadway musical’, but I just had to instinctively follow my nose and just do what felt right,” he says.

Conor’s story is as important to Girl From The North Country as Dylan’s songs, not least because the Great Depression resonates with our era of Covid strictures and now the cost-of-living crisis. “We all wonder how we would cope when the chips are down, because that’s who we really are,” he says.

“When all the distractions of modern life are stripped away, people think, ‘How strong am I?’ The truth is that humans are very resilient and we don’t need a lot of what we think we need. That’s a good thing to know.”

Dylan, by the way, has seen the show “a few times”. His verdict? “To be associated with Conor is one of the highlights of my professional life,” he said. “It goes without saying the man is a genius for putting this thing together and I’m thrilled to be a part of the experience. My songs couldn’t be in better hands.”

Girl From The North Country runs at York Theatre Royal from September 6 to 10, 7.30pm plus 2pm, Thursday, and 2.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Copyright of The Press, York

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Bob Dylan to play Hull Bonus Arena on Rough And Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour. Hurry, hurry, tickets go on sale this morning

BOB Dylan will play Hull Bonus Arena on October 27 as one of nine British dates on his Rough And Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour 2021-2024.

Tickets go on sale at 10am today at ticketmaster.co.uk/event/36005CE8F066F6 as the Nobel Prize-winning American singer-songwriter announces his first UK itinerary since his Never Ending Tour dates in April and May 2017.

Dylan, who turned 81 on May 24, began his latest travels last December in Milwaukee and has since played 74 gigs showcasing his 39th studio album, June 2020’s chart-topping Rough And Rowdy Ways, his first set of original songs since 2012’s Tempest.

Dylan will open his British visit with four intimate nights at the London Palladium on October 19, 20, 23 and 24, before playing Cardiff Motorpoint Arena on October 26, Hull the next night, Nottingham Motorpoint Arena on October 28 and Glasgow Armadillo on October 30 and 31. Preceding European dates will run from October 25 to 17, taking in Oslo, Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam.

All Dylan’s 8pm shows are “non-phone events”, where audience members must put their phones into a Yondr bag, to be kept with them until after the concert. This is intended to deter audio and video recording, photography or the distractions of using a mobile device.

American dates so far have placed an emphasis on the Minnesota-born folk and rock veteran’s latest album, rather than a greatest hits set from a 60-year career that has brought him 125 million record sales and a 2001 Oscar for Best Original Song for Things Have Changed from the Wonder Boys soundtrack.

American dates so far have placed an emphasis on the Minnesota-born folk and rock veteran’s latest album rather than greatest hits from a 60-year career that has brought him 125 million record sales and a 2001 Oscar for Best Original Song for Things Have Changed from the Wonder Boys soundtrack.

The latest addition to those sales is a one-off: a new studio recording of Dylan’s 1962-penned protest song Blowin’ In The Wind that sold for £1.5 million at auction last Thursday at Christie’s, in London, where bidding lasted four minutes, matching the length of the record coincidentally, after a guide price of £600,000 to £1million.

The recording is presented on an Ionic Original disc, a form of technology that promises to deliver higher quality sound than vinyl and can be played on a conventional turntable by the way. The disc is made of aluminium, treated with a layer of nitrocellulose, coated with a sapphire and quartz gradient.

The recording was produced by musician T Bone Burnett in “one take, if I’m not mistaken”, working with Dylan, mandolin player Greg Leisz and bassist Don Was. “It felt holy. It always feels holy for me playing with Bob,” said Burnett, who described it as a “one-off piece of singular art, the equivalent of an oil painting”.

Dylan’s music can be heard live in York too in late-summer, at the Theatre Royal from September 6 to 10, in Conor McPherson’s bold reimagining of his songs “like you’ve never heard them before” in Girl From The North Country, a heart-breaking and universal story about family and love.

Writer-director McPherson’s double Olivier and Tony Award-winning West End and Broadway hit is set in 1934 in the heartland of America, where a group of wayward souls cross paths in a time-weathered guesthouse.

Standing at a turning point in their lives, they realise nothing is what it seems, but as they search for a future and hide from the past, they find themselves facing unspoken truths about the present.

Tickets for the 7.30pm evening performances and 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees are on sale on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

A scene from Girl From The North Country, heading for York Theatre Royal in September, replete with Bob Dylan songs. Picture: Johan Persson
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Rumours spread and rebellion rises as York Theatre Royal’s new season makes a stand

The Tragedy Of Guy Fawkes playwright David Reed outside the Guy Fawkes Inn in York. Picture: Matthew Kitchen

“THE theatre has always been a place where rebellion thrives,” says chief executive Tom Bird as York Theatre Royal sets its Rumours And Rebels season in commotion.

Two legendary York figures, Guy Fawkes and the Coppergate Woman, will come to life as the spotlight is turned on those who resist, rebel and stand up to injustice, corruption and persecution this summer and autumn.

“We wanted to talk about opposition and intrigue and how ‘sticking it to the man’ manifests itself, which is often in the form of rumours first,” says Tom. “We knew we were going to be doing this strand of work with rebellion shot through it, but we also wanted a nod to the fact that rebellion can start in a more subtle phase with rumour.

“We already had rebellion in the diary with Guy Fawkes, Julius Caesar and Red Ellen, which all start with ‘talk’, and I was thinking about how you’re naturally quite wary of making heroes of people who are seen as terrorists, so I didn’t want the season to be too on the nose in celebrating rebellion without also saying it’s a complicated business.

“Look at Guy Fawkes; we think of him as a York hero but actually he wanted to blow up hundreds of people.”

Long in the planning for its York Theatre Royal world premiere, York-born writer David Reed’s “explosive new comedy about York’s most infamous rebel”, The Tragedy Of Guy Fawkes, will run from October 28 to November 12, directed by Gemma Fairlie as Monty Python meets Blackadder.

“We’ve had the script since before I came here in December 2017,” says Tom. “David [one third of the The Penny Dreadfuls comedy trio] is a local writer; the script is brilliant and funny, and the pre-sale of tickets is fantastic.”

Co-director Juliet Forster, left, and playwright Maureen Lennon with JORVIK Viking Centre’s model of The Coppergate Lady

Further explaining the Rumours And Rebels season title, Tom says: “The other reason for ‘Rumours’ is the impact of social media, where it feels like we’re surrounded by an unsolicited swirl of rumour that could lead to action, even to direct rebellion, like you saw with Trump’s supporters marching on Capitol Hill.

“Uncurated rumours bother us a lot, and that’s why we’re curating the summer and autumn programme under this title to highlight the importance of curation when news has stopped being that and so many people no longer trust experts.  Theatre is a place for resistance and for celebrating it since Athenian times.”

Standing alongside Reed’s Guy Fawkes tragi-comedy in the season ahead will be Maureen Lennon’s community play The Coppergate Woman, wherein a Valkyrie woman with the answers rises again to move among the people of York, a goddess resisting the havoc wrought by pandemic, from July 30 to August 6.

These in-house productions will be preceded by Northern Stage, Nottingham Playhouse and Royal Lyceum Theatre’s touring production of Red Ellen, Carol Bird’s epic story of inspiration Labour MP Ellen Wilkinson, who was forever on the right side of history, forever on the wrong side of life, from May 24 to 28.

“We’re super-excited about Red Ellen, which had been planned by Lorne Campbell before he left Northern Stage to move to the National Theatre of Wales. After The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff, this is another unsung political hero to be celebrated by Northern Stage.”

Flicking through the brochure, in Shakespeare’s Globe’s Julius Caesar, on June 10 and 11, the protagonists fear power running unchallenged as Diane Page directs this brutal tale of ambition, incursion and revolution; in Conor McPherson’s Girl From The North Country, from September 5 to 10, the chimes of freedom flash through a story rooted in Bob Dylan’s songs;  in Pilot Theatre’s revival of Noughts & Crosses, from September 16 to 24, the love between Selby and Callum runs counter to the politics of their segregated world.

In Frantic Assembly’s reimagined 21st century Othello, from October 18 to 22, Othello faces a barrage of racial persecution in Shakespeare’s tragedy of paranoia, sex and murder; the year ends with the Theatre Royal’s third pantomime collaboration with Evolution Productions, where Peter Pan joyously stands up to the tyranny of time, from December 2 to January 2.

York Theatre Royal chief executive Tom Bird

Delighted to welcome Shakespeare’s Globe, Tom says: “I left the Globe to move here, and as the Roman Quarter project gets underway in Rougier Street, we were interested in doing a Roman-themed work.

“We’d known for a while this would be a rebellion season, and the Globe knew we were keen to link up with them, so they gave us a couple of options. National companies are getting really good at that, and it’s great to have the Globe back for the first time since they did Henry VI.”

Tom says the season fell into place partly through the stars aligning. “If Frantic Assembly’s Othello is on tour, you take it,” he says. “It fitted perfectly with our own choices of Guy Fawkes and [York company] Pilot Theatre reviving Sabrina Mahfouz’s adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses.

“The first tour did really well, there’s since been the TV series, and it’s a story really loved by young audiences as a Romeo & Juliet for the 21st century. It’s a no-brainer to bring it back.”

Bringing a “big show” to York Theatre Royal is not easy, says Tom, given the seating capacity of 750, but that does not deter him from seeking to do so. Take the double Olivier Award-winning West End and Broadway hit Girl From The North Country, written and directed by The Weir playwright Conor McPherson.

He reimagines the songs of Bob Dylan in a universal story of family and love set in the heartland of America in 1934, when a group of wayward souls cross paths in a time-weathered guesthouse in ‘nowheresville’ [Duluth, Minnesota]. As they search for the future and hide from the past, they find themselves facing unspoken truths about the present.

“God we had to fight to get it but I’m seriously glad we did,” says Tom. “It premiered at The Old Vic and it’s one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. Bob Dylan had been badgered for years about doing a jukebox musical, and he said, ‘only if it’s a bit weird’. Luckily, he was involved in Conor getting to do it.

Girl From The North Country: “Doing a Conor McPherson on a Bob Dylan jukebox musical”

“It’s a marriage made in heaven! He does a Conor McPherson on a Bob Dylan jukebox musical: it’s an incredible, haunting story with a cast of odd characters you’d find travelling on a Greyhound bus, when you gather all this eccentricity in America and you can’t escape them, set to Dylan’s songs.

“Everyone knows Bob Dylan songs are sung better when Dylan doesn’t sing them, and for this show, they take a genuine cross section of songs from across his career, not only the Sixties.”

Among further highlights, York Stage will make their Theatre Royal debut in a 40th anniversary production of Howard Ashman and and Alan Menken’s musical Little Shop Of Horrors, from July 14 to 13, and Original Theatre will present Susie Blake as Miss Marple in Rachel Wagstaff’s new adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d, from October 4 to 8.

“I’d been a bit worried whether a murder mystery is still what people want as we’ve seen that move from drawing-room plays to musicals in audience tastes, but The Mirror Crack’d has gone like a train at the box office,” says Tom.

Summing up the philosophy behind Rumours And Rebels, he concludes : “It’s not easy to have a themed season when we put on such diverse work here, but when we see ways to do seasons with connected themes we will do it, like the Theatre Royal did with seasons focusing on Yorkshire and women before I came here.

“By having a theme, hopefully it will encourage people to see more plays in the season having enjoyed one.

“Overall, for me, what we’re eliminating from York Theatre Royal is the middle-of-the-road. When we bring in touring shows, we might as well go ‘big’, bringing in new audiences; when we produce plays, we’re going to do new work like The Tragedy Of Guy Fawkes and The Coppergate Woman, not Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, which might be my favourite play but wouldn’t get an audience.”

For the full programme and tickets details for Rumours And Rebels at York Theatre Royal, go to: yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Box office: 01904 623568.

Copyright Of The Press, York

Susie Blake as Miss Marple in Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d