Broadway in Chicago’s “Girl From the North Country,” with Aidan Wharton/Photo: Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade
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There are parallel performances going on in “Girl From the North Country.” One is a convoluted, Depression-era ensemble-cast spoken drama about a family-run boarding house. The action takes place in Duluth, Minnesota, but playwright Conor McPherson’s Irish melancholy weighs heavily throughout, with nods to O’Neill and Wilder.
That work is regularly set aside and simple songs emerge that are sung country-folk style that may or may not have anything to do with the surrounding dramaturgy.
Ah, but they’re Bob Dylan songs. Pleasantly and pleasingly presented, to be sure. Do they move the action forward? Never. Do they reflect what is being felt by a character? Sometimes, but usually with a dose of imagination needed to adjust as needed. More often than not, they offer an atemporal reflection on the arbitrary, often in contrast with character actions which seem more specific and deliberate.
Broadway in Chicago’s “Girl From the North Country,” with Chiara Trentalange, Ben Biggers/Photo: Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade
The end result is something that defies categorization. Is “Girl From the North Country” a musical? Not by any previously recognizable template. A play with songs? Perhaps, but in the world the work inhabits, words and music and songs seamlessly intersect, even if the lyrics are often left to linger at their own pace.
The usual windups to cross into music are not there because incidental music comes and goes organically as needed, played and sung by the characters themselves. Pauses for applause—even for big numbers when they do occur—are not there; the characters just keep on doing whatever they were doing. Even the way both acts of the show start: with a solo sung voice with the lights still on, and the way both acts of the show “end,” if it can be called that, is a slow fade back to our own reality, wherein we are compelled to compare what we have experienced to the lives we are experiencing. It doesn’t hit you over the head. You take what has happened with you, and the songs and experiences continue to intertwine in your head.
“Did you follow all of that?” I asked a colleague. “It doesn’t matter,” was the response.
On stage through February 25 at CIBC Theatre, 18 West Monroe. Tickets are available at broadwayinchicago.com.
