Theatre in Review: Girl from the North Country (Public Theater)

	Kimber Sprawl, Sydney James Harcourt. Photo: Joan Marcus.

Can a play succeed on mood alone? That's the bet laid down by Conor McPherson and company in this attempt at a high-toned jukebox musical drawing on the enigmatic, supremely melancholic ballads of Bob Dylan. McPherson, a specialist in haunted Irish landscapes, assembles a boardinghouse filled with the lost, the lonely, and the lunatic; the setting is Duluth, Minnesota -- Dylan's hometown -- in 1934, the depth of the Great Depression. It's a place where "each and every winter feels seven months long" and the sound of wind whipping around the stage is its own song of desolation. Rae Smith's gorgeously dilapidated set -- a deep, largely empty space with a stained linoleum floor and walls painted dark enough to hide the creeping neglect -- is the last stop before the poorhouse or perdition or both; a row of clear bulbs lining proscenium makes a pathetic attempt at gaiety. The feeling of abandonment is heightened by Mark Henderson's superb lighting, an anemic lamplit wash that barely holds back the surrounding darkness; sadness hangs in the air like the haze that floats a couple of feet above the actors' heads.

The people huddling for warmth inside this cheerless place are equally worn down by life. Nick Laine, the proprietor, is facing foreclosure, adding a terrible urgency to the question of what to do with his psychotic wife, Elizabeth. (One minute, she is perfectly placid; the next, she wields a knife -- and she means it.) Nick gets little help from his son, Gene, a boozing would-be writer, and his adopted daughter, Marianne, who is four months pregnant, with no husband in sight; she isn't showing, however, and she never turns down the offer of a whisky. The clientele includes Mrs. Nielsen, a widow awaiting her inheritance, who comforts Nick with dreams of a life together; Joe Scott, a once-promising boxer hobbled by a murky past; the Burkes, a family of three on the run from bankruptcy and, possibly, worse; Reverend Marlowe, a Bible salesman with a sideline in blackmail and theft. Hovering on the edge are the watchful, morphine-distributing Dr. Walker and Mr. Perry, an aging, widowed cobbler who wants to spend his few remaining days as Marianne's husband -- no matter that she can't stand him.

The potential for drama is everywhere as these desperate characters struggle to scratch out a modicum of contentment even as time and money are running out. (At least two deaths haunt the background of the story, as well.) But the focus keeps shifting to the Dylan numbers, with their enigmatic allusions and downbeat melodies. If you're aiming for a mood of sustained melancholy, Dylan certainly is your man; as arranged by Simon Hale and performed by the gifted cast, the songs often land more strongly than the book scenes. "I Want You" serves as an effective breakup number for Gene and his departing ex-girlfriend. "Like a Rolling Stone," as delivered by Elizabeth, casts a dark spell on the stage. Several key developments are woven into and around "Hurricane," sung by the company at a Thanksgiving party.

But while the ambitions of Girl from the North Country are miles above airheaded entertainments like Head Over Heels or Escape to Margaritaville, it still suffers from the central problem that afflicts all jukebox musicals: The songs connect to the action in only the most general sense, serving as so many pauses rather than helping to deepen our understanding of the characters or move the story along. They also take up valuable time, leaving the multiple plot lines undernourished for lack of attention. Many plot points are brought up only to be dropped: Reverend Marlowe's attempt at blackmailing Mr. Burke is never followed up; the troubled relationship between Nick and Gene is left unexplored, as is Gene's unhappy romance; Mrs. Nielsen's attachment to Nick is hard to credit, so little do we see of them together. The oddest subplot focuses on Marianne: Apparently pregnant -- if she is; there are two schools of thought about this -- by some unexplained spiritual phenomenon, and with a sexless marriage to Mr. Perry on offer, she is the star of her own Nativity story. But she is so tight-lipped that her situation is all but incomprehensible, and her growing attraction to Joe is only one of many half-hearted developments.

Marianne's story also highlights one of the play's strangest aspects. She is black, having been adopted by Nick and Elizabeth; the circumstances of this are not explained, and all we are told is, "To say it wasn't fashionable in Minnesota to raise a black child in a white family would be an understatement." Well, yes, and it's even less likely that Nick would be renting to blacks and whites alike and carrying on with the black Mrs. Nielsen. Surely 1934 wasn't the year the races would be mingling under one roof. Furthermore, the dialogue has no period quality whatsoever; men and women use the F word freely and Marianne uses such modern locutions as "we'll figure it out" and "Maybe you're just a predator," the latter to label Mr. Perry with one of the twenty-first century's favorite buzzwords. As a tribute to the production's muse, the Duluth setting makes sense; Dylan was born there, seven years after the action of the play. But McPherson's treatment of the period is oddly ahistorical in its lack of concern for the social realities of the Depression years.

McPherson, acting as his own director, has assembled a cast of New York's finest actors, to mixed effect. Stephen Bogardus and Mare Winningham still seem to be finding their way as Nick and Elizabeth, and Robert Joy is saddled with the thankless role of Doctor Walker, forever dropping by to deliver another dollop of exposition. But Marc Kudisch and Luba Mason make the Burkes seems authentically beaten up by life, and Todd Almond is an unsettling presence as their mentally troubled son; Kudisch's big breakdown scene is the most compelling thing in the play. Also, David Pittu exudes seediness as Reverend Marlowe; Tom Nelis is pathetic as Mr. Perry, trying to win Marianne by pleading "I won't never touch you!"; and Colton Ryan is ripe with resentment as Gene. Given little to work with, Kimber Sprawl convinces us that Marianne possesses untold depths, and she has real chemistry with Sydney James Harcourt as Joe.

The onstage musicians are first-rate, with Mason taking over the drums on selected numbers, and Lucy Hind's movement sequences are attractive and appropriate. Smith's costumes are solid and Simon Baker's sound design achieves a nearly ideal transparency.

It is, I suppose, possible to enjoy Girl from the North Country as a series of vignettes caught on the fly and thrown up against the Dylan numbers, but the satisfactions of drama are largely missing from this singular entertainment. You can pretty much sum it up in one sentence: Everybody sings the blues. -- David Barbour