REVIEW: GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY AT THE THEATRE ROYAL, SYDNEY

Lisa McCune in Girl from the North Country. Photo: Daniel Boud

Watching Girl from the North Country, these thoughts were recurring: the singing is wonderful; the choreography is brilliant and hard to look away from; Dylan’s lyrics are timeless, able to adapt to Depression-era Minnesota as easily as Covid-ridden Sydney. And all the decades in between.

Playwright Conor McPherson was given free rein by Dylan to use his entire catalogue for his play, which is set in Dylan’s birthplace of Duluth, though a decade before he came into the world as Robert Zimmerman.

In a rundown boarding house, Nick Laine (Peter Kowitz) and his wife Elizabeth (Lisa McCune) are landlords to a loose ‘family’ of drifters, ne’er do wells and romantics striving for love, money and something better as they cope with unemployment, foreclosures and poverty. The action is topped and tailed (from the grave) by a narrator, Dr Walker (Terence Crawford), who is able to manage his depression with the Depression with morphine.

Who is the girl from the North Country? Best contender is McCune’s Elizabeth, but it could be her adopted (and now pregnant) teenage daughter Marianne (Zahra Newman); houseguest Mrs Nelson (Christina O’Neill), a widow waiting on probate; even Katherine Draper (Elizabeth Hay ), driven to leave her wannabe writer boyfriend Gene Laine (James Smith) for a husband with presumably better prospects. Either way, McCune gets the opening solo with Went to See the Gypsy – not one of Dylan’s better known songs, but like every one of the 20 or so chosen by McPherson, one that speaks to the character or the story. And McCune’s strong, clear rendition is fabulous. In a cast without any weak links, she stands out. Both for her voice and for portrayal of Elizabeth, whose dementia makes her childlike one minute, vicious the next; apparently unaware of her husband’s betrayal with Mrs Nelson, then acutely knowing. Whether festooned with multiple handbags (costume design, Rae Smith) or brandishing a knife, McCune commands the stage.

Then there is Callum Francis and his fabulous voice. We meet Francis as Joe Scott, a boxer – possibly on the run from wrongful imprisonment, and in the company of a bible salesman. Joe’s first solo is Slow Train, but we know we’re going to hear him again, singing Hurricane. Another standout performer.

Newman’s portrayal of Marianne, who refuses to name her baby’s father, is quiet and empathic. She will not settle for Mr Perry – old, lonely and willing to take her on (Peter Carroll, brilliant as usual even if Marianne rejects him) – and resists Joe’s attempts to befriend her. She, too, has a great voice and makes the mournful numbers even more poignant.

But that’s the thing, here. Everyone’s prospects are bleak; Dylan writes lyrics that can speak to the times, whatever they are. The ones chosen suit the US in the 1930s but when McCune sings Like a Rolling Stone in the second act, the words seem relevant to now. Depression, Covid, to be on your own, with no direction home. The overall tone of this show is sombre, the music more gospel and congregational than rhythmic/pop. The Ensemble’s chorus and choreography (movement director, Lucy Hinds) bring moments of exuberance and joy.

And Girl from the North Country does not have a compelling storyline. We are voyeurs, looking through the windows of the boarding house at a series of vignettes. Watching people trying to get by, doing whatever it takes. The songs are sung direct to the audience, inviting us in. When Helen Dallimore is not playing Mrs Burke – a faded blonde, struggling to cope with her unsatisfactory husband and their (possibly) autistic adult son – she takes to the drum kit, with some relish. Under the supervision of musical director Andrew Ross, fellow band members are Mark Harris on the double bass, Cameron Henderson on acoustic and slide guitar and Tracy Lynch on violin and mandolin. Simon Hale is the man who has arranged and rearranged Dylan’s songs. Sometimes two, three or four are joined together.

Both McPherson (who also directs) and Hales are reported to have thought their task daunting. A relief it must have been to know that Dylan, who snuck into one of the US performances, loved it.

Until 27 February.

More details and tickets, visit theatreroyal.com