THEATRE REVIEW: Girl From The North Country - The Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield

A Bob Dylan jukebox musical? Well, not exactly. Anyone expecting 'Girl From The North Country'

to do for the Zim what 'Mama Mia' did for ABBA or 'Sunny Afternoon' for The Kinks may be in for a

disappointment, as Girl is very definitely a ‘play with songs’ rather than a musical.

Quite a substantial play in fact, and with considerable ambitions. Or do I mean pretensions?

On reflection, yes, I do. Conor McPherson has written a Chekhovian drama, set in a boarding

house in Duluth, Minnesota (Dylan’s birthplace) in 1934, which involves a number of disparate,

down-on-their-luck characters, brought together and into conflicting circumstances: some are the

boarding house staff, others are the transient lodgers, an assortment of Depression-era American

‘types’ already familiar to those who’ve read their John Steinbeck and Studs Terkel. A narrator

makes occasional appearances to remind us of the date and to inform us, unavailingly, of what’s

meant to be going on. The proprietor has a sick wife and a pregnant housemaid. The pregnant

housemaid has an elderly suitor. A Bible salesman drifts through, in the company of a prize-fighter.

There’s great deal of play here, and it’s less than compelling - partly because the characters are such

obvious stereotypes. The dialogue has a hackneyed quality that aligns it rather too comfortably

with the B movies of the period and by the end of the first act, the suspicion grows that this is just a

third rate American drama, albeit one written (and directed) by an Irishman.

But all is not lost, because interpolating the long and arid stretches of meandering dialogue,

are the songs: not the most obvious songs from the vast Dylan songbook ('Like A Rolling Stone' or

'Make You Feel My Love' might be the only ones known to a general audience) but that may not be

such a bad thing. Whatever Dylan’s own merits as a vocalist, it’s hard to deny that his own

recordings sometimes sold his melodies short and here they are given full value by a tremendous

cast, with some serious voices. Justina Kehinde, Elizabeth Laine and Maria Omakinwa were

particularly impressive in their solo numbers, as was the rest of the ensemble in the choral ones

and it was, at times, revelatory to hear underrated songs like 'True Love Tends To Forget' and

relatively unknown ones like 'Went To See The Gypsy' and 'Tight Connection To My Heart' finally

given their due. Slightly better-known songs like 'You Ain't Going Nowhere', 'Jokerman' and

'Hurricane' were given rousing renditions, too. But their relevance to the action of the play seemed

only tangential at best. The song that gives the play its title was conspicuous by its absence.

A strange confection, then, something that was neither fish nor fowl and for a production

that trades on its Dylan material, there’s an awful lot of McPherson. Dylan fans who are wary of

the theatre should approach it with caution. 

Reviewer - Paul Ashcroft
on - 17.1.23