The Dichotomy of Girl From The North Country (2024)

Usually, when people say someone or something defies logic, they're describing an amazing accomplishment that thrills and amazes all who behold.

But there’s another more technical way to parse the phrase. To defy logic can mean to thumb one’s nose at the law of non-contradiction which states that contradictory propositions cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time.

Girl From the North Country is this other type of logic defiance.

Written and directed by Irish playwright Conor McPherson (The Weir, The Seafarer), the show reimagines 20 Bob Dylan songs (orchestrations by Simon Hale) and sets them in a Depression-era boarding house in Minnesota (Dylan's birthplace).

It's one of the worst musicals possible and simultaneously, one of the most beautifully beguiling.
Before the curtain rises, the show is a ridiculous idea. Why choose McPherson, known for his tales of disquiet, drink and demonic yarns – Irish mostly of course, who has never tackled a musical, to helm this show?

Who thought it a good idea to take Dylan’s Nobel-winning poetry-songs and wrestle them into showtune format? And then decide not to include many familiar hits and arrange songs so differently that it frustrates audiences’ need to sing along. Or even recognize some songs.

Thank heavens no one pushed the Dylan bio-musical idea as that would have been utter torture, but is plopping his work into an era he didn’t write about much better?

Yes, all of this is a disaster. But maybe it's also brilliant. After all, if you're going to do a Dylan musical it better as hell break the mold. It better be the newly electric fighting against the expected acoustic, no matter who it upsets in the short term.

Girl from the North Country, which takes its title from a Dylan song, explores the interconnected lives of Depression-era characters all in dire straits. And brace yourself, there are many.

Boarding house owner Nick begrudgingly takes care of his wife Elizabeth who is suffering from later-in-life mental illness. His son Gene is an alcoholic wanna-be writer incapable of getting a job. Meanwhile, Nick’s having an affair with his tenant Mrs. Neilsen and trying to marry off his adopted pregnant daughter Marianne to the much older Mr. Perry. All the while trying to fend off foreclosure.

Other boarding house guests include a once affluent family, the Burkes with their developmentally challenged adult son, Elias, who is prone to violent outbursts, Reverend Marlowe the con-man bible salesman and Joe Scott, a boxer who’s been wrongly accused of murder.

Finally, there's the town physician, Dr. Walker, who dolls out drugs at will and acts as the show's overly relied-on narrator.

It's frankly too many characters to focus on, yet McPherson works some of his narrative magic, helped in this production by a uniformly stellar cast doing ample justice to the play’s dark realism and the much-appreciated funny moments. Despite no one having time to develop or even give us a tangible back story to hook onto, we surprisingly care about these people. Or care enough.

What becomes harder to hold onto are the musical numbers. Namely their almost total disconnect from the characters singing them or the thinly drawn action of the story.

“It’s as though I’m watching a play and every once in a while, a Dylan song breaks out,” said the man sitting next to me. This after he asked if I understood the lyrics – by which he meant not could I distinguish the Dylan songs, but did I know why for example why Like a Rolling Stone was sung by the mentally ill wife after the Burkes get tragic family news? Or why Mrs. Neilson sings Went to See the Gypsy before we even know who she is. And what does Jokerman or All Along the Watchtower have to do with any of these people's lives?

If a musical's numbers are meant to fill out a character, inform their present mind, or push the narrative forward, Girl does none of these. Only Hurricane has any connection to the narrative and even then, it feels like McPherson created an ex-con boxer just to have one damn song make sense.

So then back to the defying logic issue. If all of this is true and this is the ugly baby of the musical world, where is the beauty that was promised?

Some of it, the easy piece, is the look of the show, which is as precisely rag-tag as the characters in it.
Set against a mostly dark backdrop, with a dirty warm wash of light, the set is a messy jumble of tables, chairs and instruments (the music is played onstage in the background and occasionally upfront on a piano or drum set).

Stand-up mics are donned in many songs, giving the whole thing a radio play/'30s era Prairie Home Companion kind of feel. Intimate, cozy, shabby but welcoming despite the struggle. And a perfect backdrop for Dylan's music if you can free yourself from the constructs and constraints of a traditional musical.

No, the songs don’t make any sense in this show. But then most of Dylan’s songs are unknowable. They are poetry without a confirmed genesis story, padded with theories and speculation by people trying to read a mind that wishes to remain opaque. So why try to assign the songs meaning beyond the atmospheric as McPherson has done? Let the numbers come when they will, gorgeously performed here and interestingly arranged.

And choreography? Don’t make me laugh. Have you ever danced to a Dylan song? The movement on stage, and there is enough to keep things visually pleasing, comes from group sways or couples dancing and the occasional shimmy when things get momentarily upbeat.

It's as though Girl has created the post-musical musical. One where we don't clap after every number. Where there are no big numbers. One where we release our expectations and let the music move us. One where the beauty of the thing is simply the thing’s beauty and not its structure or coherence at all.

The musical times as a whole may not be a-changin, but Girl From The North Country makes a case that in certain instances, maybe they should be.

Girl From The North Country continues through May 5 at the Hobby Center, 800 Bagby. For more information, call 713-315-2525 or visit broadwayattjehobbycenter.com or thehobbycenter.org. $35-$95.