Girl From the North Country – Noel Coward Theatre

Sheila Atim and Shirley Henderson in Girl From The North Country at the Noël Coward Theatre, London. Picture: Manuel Harlan

Girl From the North Country continues at the Noël Coward Theatre, London.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★

The origins of Girl From the North Country, as retold in the programme notes, do not sound like your typical musical. Playwright Conor McPherson was approached by Bob Dylan’s record company, inviting him to construct a play using any songs from the Nobel winner’s back catalogue he cared to select.

Only later did McPherson hit upon a story set in 1930s Depression-era Minnesota (Duluth, the city of Dylan’s birth) that used songs neither as convoluted narrative drivers, nor as another bland artist biography.

Instead – in this transfer from The Old Vic – McPherson constructs a tale set in a boarding house, a location where many people pause on a road they hope will lead to financial, spiritual or physical escape, from Arinzé Kene’s boxer Joe to Finbar Lynch’s unctuous bible salesman and Debbie Kurup as a widow who is waiting for her late husband’s estate to be paid to her.

A four-piece onstage band backs up a cast which plays and sings a variety of Dylan songs into old-fashioned microphones.

The connection each number has with the unfolding story is thematic, at best; the impression one receives is that McPherson seeks to explore characters’ inner psyche through song, but the lack of direct connection between song and character makes that harder than an originally written musical would manage.

Within the narrative, Ciarán Hinds’ boarding house manager Nick is a ball of frustration, barking lines left and right. As McPherson’s script unfolds, we see the pressures he must be under: an alcoholic, pugilistic son; an unwed, pregnant adoptive daughter; and, most importantly, a wife (Shirley Henderson) who has early onset dementia.

Henderson, an actor who is incapable of giving a dull line reading, is handed a gem of a part here: a woman who behaves as a destructive child or near-psychic savant dependent upon the needs of a scene. She also possesses a wonderfully rich voice (giving a stellar rendition of ‘Like a Rolling Stone’).

Especially impressive musically is Sheila Atim, who as the pregnant Marianne delivers a thoughtful, measured performance, but who comes alive through song.

In Act II, Jack Shalloo – previously saddled with a role as an oversized child with anger issues that could have been lifted from Of Mice and Men – lets rip with a barnstorming rendition of ‘Duquesne Whistle’ – the newest Dylan song used in the show, dating from 2012.

But while the songs range some 40 years of Dylan’s songwriting career, the 1930s setting, combined with Simon Hale’s arrangements, elevate each musical number to glorious heights.

Hale does not use any musical instruments that would be anachronistic to the setting – there will be no ‘Judas!’ moments here – but the act of replacing Dylan’s distinctive vocal drawl with an array of strong female vocal harmonies, or with powerful belting solos, brings out nuance and power that even those familiar with Dylan’s catalogue may find surprising.

There remains a feeling that if McPherson had written solely a play about his Duluth boarding house, or had constructed a musical in which Dylan’s lyrics made a rather more literal connection to the book, Girl From the North Country might feel like a more familiar, more comfortable fit into West End tradition.

In its hybrid form, though, this is a piece which requires its audience to lean in, to accept its disjoint presentation, to run with a presentational style which does not fit with our accepted view of what theatre looks like. If one can do that, one finds an impressively satisfying piece of entertainment.

Scott Matthewman

Tickets for Girl from the North Country at the Noel Coward Theatre are available HERE.