A musical inspired by the songs of Bob Dylan comes to Charlotte
September 11, 2024
Vinegar and honey: An unlikely coupling of songwriter Bob Dylan and playwright Conor McPherson delivers a resonant theatrical performance in Girl from the North Country.
by Michael J. Solender
Broadway is known for collaborations between artists from disparate backgrounds, disciplines and generations. Charlotte audiences will soon get to experience a most unusual — and unusually talented — partnering pair in Girl from the North Country, on stage at Belk Theater Oct. 1-6.
One of the creators has a Nobel Prize in Literature, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award, and the admiration of a generation that made his music anthemic for a cultural revolution. The other is an Irish-born playwright, screenwriter and cultural documentarian whose theatrical awards include The Europe Theatre Prize, the Evening Standard Award, the Laurence Olivier Award, and several Tony Award nominations.
Legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and heralded playwright Conor McPherson never met prior to production of the play, first staged in 2017 at London’s Old Vic.
Girl from the North Country originated from Dylan’s interest in seeing how a theatrical production could be staged using his expansive song catalog as source material to inspire a play. Dylan’s representatives quietly approached McPherson’s agent with an inquiry as to whether he’d be interested in developing a show with Dylan’s music as inspiration.
Initially, McPherson was puzzled. “Then, out of the blue, I had the idea of a show set in the 1930s with a kind of Eugene O’Neill–type of feeling,” McPherson said in a 2023 interview. “I felt Bob’s songs could fit into that.”
After Dylan greenlit the concept, he deliberately remained hands off, allowing the playwright to exercise his craft unimpeded.
Left: Sharae Moultrie. Right: Cast photo from Girl from the North Country. Photographs by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade courtesy Blumenthal Arts.
The result is a masterpiece in a genre of popular alternative musical theater – a realm just off the mainstream and not a jukebox, airy bio-show.
Here, 20 mostly lesser-known Dylan works set the tone and underscore a narrative focused on Depression-era 1930’s, mostly rural America.
Set in Duluth, Minnesota, Dylan’s birthplace and just north of where he spent his childhood in Hibbing, the story features an ensemble cast of tenants of a boarding house, an inexpensive communal accommodation not uncommon in that era.
We meet the struggling owner Nick, who deals with his sickly wife, an alcoholic son, and his pregnant adopted daughter, Marianne. To improve their situation, Nick tries to marry Marianne off to an older man, Mr. Perry. Other residents include a boxer, a suspicious reverend, the Burke family with their slow-witted son, and Nick’s secret lover, Mrs. Neilsen.
“The characters are beset by these difficulties of almost biblical proportions,” says Timothy Splain, the touring production’s music director. “They don’t really understand the trouble they’re in or the forces they’re up against. They’re just trying to keep their heads above water and repeatedly grappling with unsolvable problems. And then, just when things seem truly terrible, there’s a moment of light, a moment of grace when the door is just sort of cracked open and a little light shines in. And that’s Dylan’s music in this play – the honey to the vinegar.”
In his role, Splain is responsible for maintaining the musical vision of the production with the cast, conducting the band where he also plays piano, and managing the day-to-day musical operations of the show. The music is very much a non-literal presentation of Dylan’s work, he explains, but rather exists alongside the action of the book — the narrative and dialogue of the play.
“Conor would impress upon us that the music and the dialogue shouldn’t ever be doing the same thing in this show,” Splain says, “Because if they’re doing the same thing, then let’s just have the play or let’s just have the songs. Instead, there’s a back and forth where their narrative does take a pause, and the characters go into something of a meditative space. It’s analogous to a hymn in a church service that follows a sermon in that regard.”
Dylan’s soundtrack to McPherson’s book is less of a libretto or operatic dialogue and more an expression of the characters’ internal monologue. Works like “Hurricane,” “Idiot Wind,” “Forever Young,” “Slow Train,” and his classic “Like a Rolling Stone,” are performed mostly a cappella, accompanied by period instrumentation, or backed by a chorus.
Girl from the North Country is an untypical, yet exciting, choice for Blumenthal Arts, which is dominated by lighter fare and universally recognized blockbuster musicals. This offering is deep, ponderous, darkly dramatic and ultimately moving.
**
Want to go?
What: Girl From the North Country.
Where: Belk Theater at Blumenthal Arts Center.
When: Oct. 1-6
Tickets start at $35. Click here for more information.
Featured image by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade courtesy Blumenthal Arts.
