Review: GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY May Have Been Created Expressly For Nashville Audiences

If one stipulates to the fact that in musical theater, people sing when their emotions are so overwhelming, their thoughts so profound, their feelings so passionate that it’s the only way they can adequately express themselves – then, clearly, Girl From The North Country (Irish playwright and director Conor McPherson’s Tony Award-winning work that interpolates some 20 songs by Bob Dylan into the script) is a musical. Despite that, Girl From The North Country, now onstage at Tennessee Performing Arts Center’s Andrew Jackson Hall through Sunday, February 4, is unique in and of itself and, truth be told, quite unlike any other musical theater offering with which you may be familiar.

No chandeliers come crashing down upon a rapt audience, no one defies gravity to take to the western sky and no high-kicking chorus girls and boys deliver showtunes amid all the razzle-dazzle of traditional musical comedy. But the stories told by the characters in Girl From The North Country – and the songs that allow them to eloquently express the longings in their souls and the poetry in their hearts – are reminders of the power of live theater to transform lives and transport audiences to worlds away from the reality of their day-to-day lives.

Set in Depression-era Duluth, Minnesota (which just happens to be Bob Dylan’s birthplace) and bringing a group of disparate, somewhat ragtag and endlessly fascinating characters together to deliver a deeply moving, albeit tragic, tale of love and hope that reverberates in even the darkest of times, Girl From The North Country nonetheless sparkles and glows radiantly as it comes to life thanks to McPherson’s innovative and immersive direction that draws audiences directly into the events that take place onstage and the sublimely talented ensemble brought together to bring the stories so vividly to life.

The production’s use of the songs of Bob Dylan offers audiences a unique perspective on his body of work, hearing some of his more familiar songs as if new and as yet to be experienced. If anything, Girl From the North Country gives aficionados and even those totally unfamiliar with the depth of his songwriting talents an opportunity to luxuriate in the poetry of his words, and to listen to the musicality of his compositions with an open mind and heart.

Everything about Girl From The North Country – the spare, but artful, set design, the period-perfect costumes and hairstyles, the minimal but visually appealing set pieces (all designed by Rae Smith) and the amber glow of Mark Henderson’s lighting design – is evocative of its time and setting. And there are moments in which you easily may recall passages from John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath or William Kennedy’s Ironweed, which may be coincidental or redolent of anything set during the lean years of the 1930s. Simon Hale’s Tony Award-winning orchestrations, which are performed on instruments of the era and performed by three onstage musicians and even some of the actors who join them for a “jam session” of a decidedly theatrical nature. There’s no choreography to speak of, yet every movement (under the direction of Lucy Hind) is intentional and evocative of the time period – in fact, there was one moment (so brief you might miss it unless your attention is riveted to the players onstage) during which I was reminded of a similar (and slight) hand movement from a scene in the German television series Babylon Berlin, which his set in Weimar Germany, circa 1932.

Here, it’s November 1934 and during three days over the Thanksgiving weekend the people gathered – whether by fate, necessity or happenstance – at Elizabeth and Nick Laine’s (played with careworn authenticity and startling candor by Jennifer Blood and John Schiappa) boarding house struggle to survive the deepest, darkest days of the Great Depression with little hope and scarcely a glimmer of any better days still to come. Yet somehow amid their travails and an overwhelming sense of foreboding and crippling ennui, there is something deep within their hearts that keeps them pressing on in search of the halcyon days of a bleak midwinter.

With the avuncular Dr. Walker (played by Alan Ariano, with the kind of smalltown gravitas reserved for those who are there when people are born and when they die, as well) as our guide, we are made privy to the lives of the people brought together under their soon-to-be reposessed roof during a particularly portentous weekend. Not unlike the role of the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, Dr. Walker bookends the play, giving us entre into the story already happening before us and providing us with a necessary coda to answer our queries even before we are able to articulate them ourselves at play’s end.

The Laines’ two children – Gene and Marianne (played by Ben Biggers and Sharae Moultrie) are reflective of the times in which they live: he’s a disaffected would-be writer who drinks and probably won’t amount to much (which explains why a young woman named Kate, played by Chiara Trentalange stops by on her way to catch a bus to New York to marry someone with better prospects); Marianne is said to four-and-a-half months pregnant by some unnamed personage who might be supernatural (or is it all a figment of her imagination?). Mrs. Neilsen (the luminous Carla Woods) is a guest who may have overstayed her welcome due to a continuing affair of a sexual nature with Nick. There’s also a down-on-their-luck married couple, The Burkes (Jill Van Velzer and David Benoit each have estimable stage presence to spare), who have apparently lost everything in the Crash, living in an upstairs room with their intellectually challenged son, the childlike Elias (who reminds you of a more socialized Boo Radley, now that I think of it) played by Aidan Wharton, who delivers one of the evening’s most consequential musical performances that will leave you breathless, your mouth agape at the shocking denouement that unfolds.

In addition, there’s an ex-con named Joe Scott (portrayed by Matt Manuel), a shifty Bible salesman called Reverend Marlowe (Jeremy Webb shines in the role) and an elderly shopkeeper Mr. Perry (Jay Russell) who’s been recruited by Nick to make the unmarried and pregnant Marianne “an honest woman.” Ashley D. Brooks, Justin Michael Duval, Kelly McCormick and Hosea Mundi complete the ensemble.

Dylan’s songs are stunningly, startlingly performed by McPherson’s enormously talented cast who come together to create a whole world within the confines of Jackson Hall. A palpable sense of authenticity and relevancy pervades the theater as the play’s action transpires, somehow seeming totally spontaneous, perhaps as if it were improvised during the performance reviewed (and every one before or after, it would follow), but there exists an equally pervasive sense of confidence and assurance that telegraphs it may have indeed emerged fully formed from the electricity found in a particularly creative and safe rehearsal room in which art has been crafted.

The stories that emanate from the stage (however tragic they might be) are presented with such a strong visual aesthetic and artistic certainty that you cannot help but be thoroughly entranced by the creativity – and the power to express it – of everyone involved. If, by the time of the show’s penultimate number — a heartrending version of “Forever Young” performed by the superb Jennifer Blood — you’re not struggling to keep the tears at bay, rest assured that “Pressing On,” the song that is delivered with astonishing alacrity during the curtain call, will.

Perhaps without knowing it, McPherson, the show’s creative collective and everyone involved with bringing Girl From The North Country to the stage have created the perfect musical for Nashville’s discerning theater audiences, people who know a thing or two about appreciating music, art and live performance. Only when you begin to leave the theater, perhaps awestruck by what you have just experienced, will you realize the gravity of what you have just seen.

And you’ll want to go back and do it all over again.

Girl From The North Country. Written and directed by Conor McPherson. Music and lyrics by Bob Dylan. Orchestrations, arrangements and musical supervision by Simon Hall. Music direction by Timothy Splain. Movement direction by Lucy Hind. Presented by Broadway at TPAC. Andrew Jackson Hall at Tennessee Performing Arts Center, Nashville. Through February 4. For ticket information, go to www.TPAC.org. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes (with one 15-minute intermission).

Photos by Evan Zimmerman/MurphyMade