Theatre Royal Bath
A card-sharp named Jack Hearts, who wears a long black coat, is hitchhiking along highway 61. He meets up with two poets, Tom and Ezra, and two ladies of dubious reputations, Joanna and Angelina. They suggest he catches a train instead, but it is too slow. They spend the night at a flop house on Desolation Row and get up really early to stow away on the Titanic. The ship's kitchen is serving wobbly soup, when an iceberg....Juke box musicals don't have a terribly good reputation, although I must admit I enjoyed Mamma Mia. Conor McPherson was apparently approached directly by Bob Dylan to see if he was interested in creating a stage play around his music. He took the relatively bold decision to take the songs completely out of context. Very little of the plot of Girl From the North Country is directly suggested by Dylan lyrics. It is a play, a very good one, which could stand alone; with musical interludes taken from the Almighty Bob's back catalogue.
McPherson was not a particular Dylan-head when he accepted the commission, and the piece is by no means a Greatest Hits compilation. (Sign On The Window, anyone? Sweetheart Like You?) Few of the songs are sung right through, and there are quite a lot of mashups: Make You Feel My Love comes part way through Like a Rolling Stone and a verse of All Along the Watchtower inveigles itself into Hurricane. Once you realise what is going on, it works rather well: like one of those overtures or symphonies constructed out of themes from popular songs.
The actual plot is a slightly less upbeat Eugene O'Neil. It takes place in a run-down boarding house at the beginning of the Depression. Various down-on-their-luck characters pass through; most of them have dark secrets we never fully discover. People leave at the end, and several deaths are reported, but there is no great denouement. Owner Nick (Colin Connor) is romantically involved with Mrs Neilsen (Keisha Amponsa Banson) who is expecting a legacy from her late husband; Nick's wife (Francis McNamee) has alzheimers; their son Gene (Gregor Milne) wears a cap, hangs out in bars, wants to be a writer but is not dying of consumption. There is an adopted daughter (Justina Kehinde) who is mysteriously pregnant, and who Nick is trying to marry off to an affable but lecherous shoe-repairer (Teddy Kempner). They are joined in the middle of the night by an itinerant bible salesman (Eli James) and an almost-famous black boxer (Joshua C Jackson). It turns out that the latter has been released from prison for a crime he did not commit, which segues neatly into one of the musical numbers. When Mrs Laine opens one of the Reverend's bibles and references a passage about God, Abraham and son-killing, the expected song fails to arrive.
I am not completely convinced by the theory that taking the songs out of context makes them "timeless". I think I prefer the "spokesman for his generation" tag. Dylan's voice is the particular voice of a man who sat by Woody Guthrie's hospital bed, introduced John Lennon to weed and shared a platform with Martin Luther King. But it is much better to have done something unexpected and not-obvious than to have just given us a Bob-themed version We Will Rock You or even Yellow Submarine. All credit to Dylan for giving McPherson free rein to do what he liked with his life's work: he apparently approves of the result.
The actual plot is a slightly less upbeat Eugene O'Neil. It takes place in a run-down boarding house at the beginning of the Depression. Various down-on-their-luck characters pass through; most of them have dark secrets we never fully discover. People leave at the end, and several deaths are reported, but there is no great denouement. Owner Nick (Colin Connor) is romantically involved with Mrs Neilsen (Keisha Amponsa Banson) who is expecting a legacy from her late husband; Nick's wife (Francis McNamee) has alzheimers; their son Gene (Gregor Milne) wears a cap, hangs out in bars, wants to be a writer but is not dying of consumption. There is an adopted daughter (Justina Kehinde) who is mysteriously pregnant, and who Nick is trying to marry off to an affable but lecherous shoe-repairer (Teddy Kempner). They are joined in the middle of the night by an itinerant bible salesman (Eli James) and an almost-famous black boxer (Joshua C Jackson). It turns out that the latter has been released from prison for a crime he did not commit, which segues neatly into one of the musical numbers. When Mrs Laine opens one of the Reverend's bibles and references a passage about God, Abraham and son-killing, the expected song fails to arrive.
The programme notes suggest that the cast are playing double roles -- as the characters in the story, and as musicians singing songs suggested by the action. Certainly, everything is performed into mics, and in some cases the realistic set is replaced by back projection, lights, starscapes and at one point a giant glitter ball. When mentally-retarded Elias Burke's off-stage death is reported, actor Ross Carswell returns to the stage in a snazzy white suit to perform a full-on song-and-dance version of Duquesne Whistle. Several times the ensemble cast form into one of those gospel-choir backing-groups, staying just on the right side of self-parody.
McPherson is particularly fond of Dylan's born-again period: the musical proper comes to an end with Forever Young, but there is a finale/encore of I'm Pressing On To The Higher Calling Of My Lord. The more we listen to Dylan, and the more his songs are covered by other artists, the more disposable tracks off overlooked albums turn out to be potential show-stoppers. Even non-aficionados in the audience who don't own Time Out Of Mind certainly knew Make You Feel My Love because Adele.
I am not completely convinced by the theory that taking the songs out of context makes them "timeless". I think I prefer the "spokesman for his generation" tag. Dylan's voice is the particular voice of a man who sat by Woody Guthrie's hospital bed, introduced John Lennon to weed and shared a platform with Martin Luther King. But it is much better to have done something unexpected and not-obvious than to have just given us a Bob-themed version We Will Rock You or even Yellow Submarine. All credit to Dylan for giving McPherson free rein to do what he liked with his life's work: he apparently approves of the result.
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I'm Andrew.
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