Nottingham Theatre Royal – until Saturday 15 October 2022
Reviewed by Amy
5*****
If you want to see a show where the vocals are as powerful as the storytelling, then you’ve found the one to see, with ‘Girl from the North Country‘. Nominated for countless awards since it was first performed in 2017 and the winner of many more, including a double Olivier award for Best New Musical.
It’s certainly not your typical jukebox musical, as it switches up glittered costumes for gritty surroundings and murky emotions.
The scene is set in 1934 in Duluth, Minnesota, in what we soon learn is a struggling guest house full of lost souls and their long lost dreams. The rundown and struggling business is run by Nick (Colin Connor) and Elizabeth Laine (Frances McNamee) and their older children, troubled Marianne (Justina Kehinde) and Gene (Gregor Milne) who has developed a dangerous drinking habit. The key problem that they all face is debt and a looming foreclosure of their home and livelihood!
Much like the leaking and broken boarding house, Nick and Elizabeth’s marriage/relationship is suffering too. She’s tragically losing her mind and Nick, her kids and some guests struggle to look after her… when she allows it.
Frances McNamee as Elizabeth was a standout performance for me vocally and physically. She gets to take on some of Dylan’s best known songs throughout her complicated portrayal of a woman battling with dementia and confusion and she evokes a whole array of intense emotions throughout.
The depression era is well and truly alive as both long-term and short-term guests of the guest house squabble, brawl and drink their way through their own sets of problems. The setting brings together folks from different realms of society and reveals their problems, as it shows us brief and significant interactions within the group, thrown together due to difficult circumstances and many secrets.
The ‘action’ darts speedily between one potential disaster, to the next with the story not placing emphasis on one set person or couple for too long.
Strung together by brief monologues from Chris McHallem’s Dr Walker, a morphine addicted GP who has a soft spot for the ailed Elizabeth and her plight.
Happily the show features the band on stage throughout as Bob Dylan classics and lesser known songs of his are crooned and belted out, with various cast members switching lead on the vocals and drums.
Unlike with most musicals using songs from an artist, where they often advance the plot or let us glimpse into the soul and hope of a character…here they often feel jarring and out of place.
The set is stark and deliberately quite minimal, with a downtrodden look like the hope of the majority of the show’s characters. It echoes the story perfectly.
I did enjoy the show and it did move me to tears, but I can’t say I left the theatre with a smile on my face or in my heart. But it’s a show that deserves to be seen due mainly to its unique style and originality.
Filled with some utterly spellbinding performances that bring a new attitude to Dylan’s lyrics – a must see if you are a fan of the loneliness and longing his music provides.