Girl From the North Country – New Wimbledon Theatre

Frances McNamee as in Girl From the North Country at the New Wimbledon Theatre, London. Picture: Johan Persson

Girl From The North Country continues at the New Wimbledon Theatre, London until 18 March 2023.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Winding down a UK and Ireland tour that began in Dublin last June, Irish playwright Conor McPherson’s masterpiece interlinking 20 Bob Dylan songs with a Depression-era drama set in 1934 in the Minnesota town where he was born came up as fresh as paint on an evening of consuming beauty.

Garlanded with rave reviews and awards when it premiered at the Old Vic in 2017, it has taken me six years to see it but, boy, was that wait worth it. As unofficial chairman of the Dylan fan club – we were born the same year, 1941 – I had been fearful that, in someone else’s hands, the challenging power of his bitter, protesting poetry which so influenced our lives in the first half of the 1960s might somehow be diminished.

Not a bit of it. Without Dylan’s harsh corncrake voice as a distraction, every golden word of great numbers like ‘Tight Connection to My Heart’ and ‘True Love Tends to Forget’ come through crystal clear when performed by a cast that really can sing.

And if ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, that unforgettable number which in 1965 finally clinched Dylan’s transition from folk singer to rock star, has ever been tackled with more fervour than Frances McNamee summons up as as the mentally deteriorating Elizabeth, it would be worth going a long way to see.

Transformed from distraught mother to dancing dervish, backed by a silhouetted chorus and the sublime musicality of the Howlin’ Winds quartet, this is a tableau that will long stay in the mind. No wonder Dylan himself is reported to have wept tears of joy when he saw this very different musical play on Broadway. McPherson has treated every line, every word with the utmost respect and found the right team to bring them to life.

For the sniffy classicists who scoffed when Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature a few years back, just give a listen to the words of ‘I Want You’, ‘Idiot Wind’ or any of this cross-section of his work from 1965 to the little-known 2012 composition ‘Duquesne Whistle’ which wrap around so seamlessly the many vignettes and  story-lines.

It’s the Depression, nobody has any money, and everybody’s either depressed, dying, been in jail or hiding guilty secrets. It doesn’t sound much fun but there are a surprising number of laughs.

The singing from all 13 principals is right out of the top drawer, with special mention of McNamee, Justina Kehinde as her adopted daughter Marianne, Maria Omakinwa as sassy widow Mrs Neilsen, Rebecca Thornhill as once-well-off Mrs Burke trying to keep up appearances, and Joshua C Jackson as ex-boxer Joe desperate to get his life back after jail.

They all stay in a due-to-foreclose boarding house in the sticks, where proprietors Nick (Colin Connor) and Elizabeth Laine eke out a bare living with their wild, shiftless son Gene (Gregor Milne) who has broken up with girlfriend Kate (Eve Norris in fine voice) and adopted black daughter Marianne, now 19, who was left in a parcel on their doorstep.

Nick wants to marry her off to lecherous shoemender Mr Perry (Teddy Kemper) but she has other ideas.There’s a preacher and a doctor who are not quite who they seem. Dr Walker also acts as narrator and with so many characters is a big help. Bit by bit the truth comes out and we learn all the back-stories of the drifters, downbeats and ne’er-do-wells who pass through.

The Burkes (James Staddon and Thornhill) have a son with learning difficulties (Ross Carswell), a business that’s gone bust and skeletons in the cupboard; Nick has no qualms about making it with widow Neilsen in full view of his ailing wife while his self-assured mistress awaits an inheritance that’s never going to arrive; Marianne and the big, strapping boxer hit it off and is the only story with a happy ending.

It’s a fascinating mix, all bonded together by Dylan’s music and McPherson’s vision.

Orchestrator Simon Hale, musical director Andrew Corcoran, Ruth Elder (violin and mandolin), Felix Strickland (guitars) and Ed McFarlane (double bass) make a magical contribution and Rae Smith’s set and costumes admirably convey the feel of small-town America where “every month in winter feels like seven”. A total triumph.

Jeremy Chapman