march 16–29, 2020 | new york 79
PHOTOGRAPH: MATTHEW MURPHYY DD AD PD EIC
young black Marianne wound up the white
Laines’ adopted daughter, how she got preg-
nant (a hint that it might be a supernatural
child goes nowhere), and whether a new
arrival, the boxer Joe (Austin Scott), might
be a good or a bad suitor for her. There are
ten other characters jockeying for our atten-
tion who often rally together for foot-
stompin’ arrangements of Dylan songs from
deep down in the catalogue. You will not
hear “Blowin’ in the Wind,” my friends. You
will hear “Idiot Wind” instead; you will hear
“True Love Tends to Forget.”
McPherson can cram a dozen stories into
two and a half hours because he works in
sketches, using quickly recognizable clichés
that let us fill in the outlines for ourselves.
The Bible salesman (Matt McGrath) with
the greasy hair? A villain, obvi-
ously, no need to show us why. The
tall, strong man (Todd Almond)
with the mind of a child? Don’t
bother explaining that he’s got ter-
rible violence in him, because we
all read Of Mice and Men in junior
high. McPherson’s plays, many of them
spectacularly good, have sometimes used
these thick crayon strokes—those self-
deceiving, gamble-happy drunks in The Sea-
farer are recognizable when they walk
onstage too. But when McPherson writes in
Irish stereotype, American eyes smile. When
he rocks up trying to deploy our stereotypes?
My eyes got very narrow indeed.
McPherson’s main dramaturgical prob-
lem here is magnitude. The size of the show
is wrong, the size of the stories, the scenes,
everything. It’s simultaneously too long and
too short—at times, so many people are get-
ting introduced, it feels like a pilot setting up
a ten-episode season. We know McPherson,
when undistracted by songs, has one of the
great senses of theatrical balance: He wrote
plays like The Weir and The Night Alive, so
perfect they seem to continue on even after
they’re over, like a bicycle wheeling along
with the rider gone. That equilibrium aban-
dons him in this his first musical—he hasn’t
worked out how to get into songs gracefully
nor how to disguise that repetitive, get-to-
the-next-number structure.
And there’s something perverse about the
way Dylan’s lyrics are handled. We are kind
of meant to pay attention to them, kind of
not. For instance, the boxer Joe sings a gale-
force version of “Hurricane,” which is indeed
about a boxer. Those parts, you’re allowed to
process. But you should also be cool enough
to ignore all the lyrics about “the hot New
Jersey night,” since that part’s not applicable.
The push-me-pull-you annoyance of it
leaves you unwilling to parse the lyrics at all.
This reaches its absolute peak when the
wonderful Luba Mason—a hotel tenant
with secrets and woes to spare— wandersonstage during “Señor.” She’s just been
wounded to the bone—but “Señor, señor,”
the others croon, as she scuffs the floor with
her shoe. What? You have to laugh.
Part of your response will depend on your
reverence for Dylan’s originals—and, at
the very least, your familiarity with them.
Be warned, Bobsessives: Simon Hale’s
arrangements—lovely and folksy and full of
tambourines—sometimes depart from the
musical spirit of the versions you know. To
turn the bitter-toned, up-tempo “I Want
You” into a love song, for instance, the team
has slowed the pace like the molasses done
froze. After a brief scene in which we meet
Kate for the first and only time, Gene and
Kate (Caitlin Houlahan) come kissing-close
and sing “I want you” a dozen times, very
deliberately. The lyrics make sense
here. They do in fact want each
other—but the originally spiky
song takes on a new, syrupy flavor.
It’s also where McPherson sets
up what will become a pattern for
how the music functions. Someone
will do something awful. Let’s say Gene
shrieks at Kate, driving away a girl who
clearly cares for him. Gene establishes that
he’s a self-pitying, aggressive creep; Kate
establishes that she is out of there. And then
they sing to each other so we can see the
“truth” of the moment—that they are acting
this way out of sorrow and love. This hap-
pens a number of times: In a spoken scene,
people are cold or deranged or, in one crucial
case, a murderer, then they sing very emo-
tionally while the light kisses them gently
from above. Because the lyrics don’t always
mean anything, the music does the talking.
And what it says again and again is: See thisperson whose behavior is bad? Underneath,
there is a beautiful soul, singing.
As dramatic metaphysics, that’s an inter-
esting way to use music. Ethically, though,
I’m more than a little troubled at the amount
of forgiveness the music ladles out. Frankly,
after a father (Marc Kudisch) kills his cogni-
tively disabled, Lennie-ish son, who is him-
self a danger to the young girls of the North
Country, I would like for them not to unite
in Song Space while warbling, gorgeously,
about the “Duquesne Whistle.” Given their
rapturous expressions, the Whistle is sup-
posed to be a metaphor for parental love and
filial grace and the glory that passeth under-
standing, but one of them just killed the
other one. Not only do these choices rob the
lyrics of any meaning; they rob the plot of
any sense of consequence too.
This mismatch between the gloomy
every-man-for-himself script and the
ecstatic every-voice-raised-in-song arrange-
ments grows increasingly silly. We watch the
community gather over and over, harmoniz-
ing around ribbon microphones or dancing
at a Thanksgiving celebration, all while
McPherson’s script insists that they’re all sad
and unsupported and suicidal. So at some
point, you just ... divorce the music in your
mind. Experienced as a concert with occa-
sional wrongheaded interruptions, Girl
From the North Country has some gorgeous
stuff in it: the company’s voices sweetly gath-
ered; Bayardelle stripping the paint of the
Belasco walls with her incandescent high
belt; Winningham’s clear voice infusing real
pathos into “Like a Rolling Stone.” Their joy-
ful noise is what I’ll remember. The rest—
let’s agree to forget it. Best to lose some
things to that blowing wind. ■“no offense, but are you a human?”
A veteran turned construction worker named Caleb (Aaron Paul) asks that
question, in season three of HBO’s Westworld, during a phone call with a company he’d
hoped would hire him. The phrasing speaks to the series’ preoccupations: The first two
words suggest that even though humans are still in charge of the planet, that might not
always be the case, so it’s smart to be polite when vetting biological bona fides.
In the first two go-rounds of HBO’s sci-fi puzzler, inspired by Michael Crichton’s 1973
film, the lifelike robots were slaves, trapped on an island where rich guests frequented
amusement parks inspired by post–Civil War America, early-20th-century India, and
17th- century Japan, entering tales reminiscent of pre-internet role-playing games and
killing, raping, and otherwise terrorizing the resident androids (or hosts) once prefab
displays of heroism became dull. Now the synthetics have started to leave the nest andTV / MATT ZOLLER SEITZBot TopicWestworld returns, both frustratinglydense and curiously compelling.GIRL FROM THE
NORTH COUNTRY
DIRECTED BY CONOR
MCPHERSON.
BELASCO THEATRE.ADVANCED FORMTRANSMITTED
________ COPY ___ DD ___ AD ___ PD ___ EIC0620CR_Critics_lay [Print]_36887654.indd 79 3/12/20 5:51 PMmarch16–29, 2020 | newyork 79young black Marianne wound up the white
Laines’ adopted daughter, how she got preg-
nant (a hint that it might be a supernatural
child goes nowhere), and whether a new
arrival, the boxer Joe (Austin Scott), might
be a good or a bad suitor for her. There are
ten other characters jockeying for our atten-
tion who often rally together for foot-
stompin’ arrangements of Dylan songs from
deep down in the catalogue. You will not
hear “Blowin’ in the Wind,” my friends. You
will hear “Idiot Wind” instead; you will hear
“True Love Tends to Forget.”
McPherson can cram a dozen stories into
two and a half hours because he works in
sketches, using quickly recognizable clichés
that let us fill in the outlines for ourselves.
The Bible salesman (Matt McGrath) with
the greasy hair? A villain, obvi-
ously, no need to show uswhy. The
tall, strong man (ToddAlmond)
with the mind of a child?Don’t
bother explaining that he’sgotter-
rible violence in him, becausewe
all read Of Mice and Meninjunior
high. McPherson’s plays,many ofthem
spectacularly good, havesometimesused
these thick crayon strokes—thoseself-
deceiving, gamble-happydrunksinTheSea-
farer are recognizablewhen they walk
onstage too. But when McPhersonwritesin
Irish stereotype, Americaneyessmile.When
he rocks up trying to deployourstereotypes?
My eyes got very narrowindeed.
McPherson’s main dramaturgicalprob-
lem here is magnitude. Thesizeoftheshow
is wrong, the size of thestories,thescenes,
everything. It’s simultaneouslytoolongand
too short—at times, so manypeopleareget-
ting introduced, it feels like a pilot setting up
a ten-episode season. We know McPherson,
when undistracted by songs, has one of the
great senses of theatrical balance: He wrote
plays like The Weir and The Night Alive, so
perfect they seem to continue on even after
they’re over, like a bicycle wheeling along
with the rider gone. That equilibrium aban-
dons him in this his first musical—he hasn’t
worked out how to get into songs gracefully
nor how to disguise that repetitive, get-to-
the-next-number structure.
And there’s something perverseaboutthe
way Dylan’s lyrics are handled. Wearekind
of meant to pay attention to them,kindof
not. For instance, the boxer Joe singsa gale-
force version of “Hurricane,” whichis indeed
about a boxer. Those parts, you’re allowedto
process. But you should also be coolenough
to ignore all the lyrics about “thehotNew
Jersey night,” since that part’s not applicable.
The push-me-pull-you annoyanceofit
leaves you unwilling to parse the lyricsat all.
This reaches its absolute peakwhenthe
wonderful Luba Mason—a hoteltenant
with secrets and woes to spare—wanders
onstage during “Señor.” She’s just been
wounded to the bone—but “Señor, señor,”
the others croon, as she scuffs the floor with
her shoe. What? You have to laugh.
Part of your response will depend on your
reverence for Dylan’s originals—and, at
the very least, your familiarity with them.
Be warned, Bobsessives: Simon Hale’s
arrangements—lovely and folksy and full of
tambourines—sometimes depart from the
musical spirit of the versions you know. To
turn the bitter-toned, up-tempo “I Want
You” into a love song, for instance, the team
has slowed the pace like the molasses done
froze. After a brief scene in which we meet
Kate for the first and only time, Gene and
Kate (Caitlin Houlahan) come kissing-close
and sing “I want you” a dozen times, very
deliberately. The lyrics make sense
here. They do in fact want each
other—but the originally spiky
song takes on a new, syrupy flavor.
It’s also where McPherson sets
up what will become a pattern for
how the music functions. Someone
willdosomething awful. Let’s say Gene
shrieksat Kate, driving away a girl who
clearlycares for him. Gene establishes that
he’sa self-pitying, aggressive creep; Kate
establishes that she is out of there. And then
theysingto each other so we can see the
“truth”ofthe moment—that they are acting
thiswayout of sorrow and love. This hap-
pensa number of times: In a spoken scene,
peopleare cold or deranged or, in one crucial
case,a murderer, then they sing very emo-
tionallywhile the light kisses them gently
fromabove. Because the lyrics don’t always
mean anything, the music does thetalking.
And what it says again and again is: See thisperson whose behavior is bad? Underneath,
there is a beautiful soul, singing.
As dramatic metaphysics, that’s an inter-
esting way to use music. Ethically, though,
I’m more than a little troubled at the amount
of forgiveness the music ladles out. Frankly,
after a father (Marc Kudisch) kills his cogni-
tively disabled, Lennie-ish son, who is him-
self a danger to the young girls of the North
Country, I would like for them not to unite
in Song Space while warbling, gorgeously,
about the “Duquesne Whistle.” Given their
rapturous expressions, the Whistle is sup-
posed to be a metaphor for parental love and
filial grace and the glory that passeth under-
standing, but one of them just killed the
other one. Not only do these choices rob the
lyrics of any meaning; they rob the plot of
any sense of consequence too.
This mismatch between the gloomy
every-man-for-himself script and the
ecstatic every-voice-raised-in-song arrange-
ments grows increasingly silly. We watch the
community gather over and over, harmoniz-
ing around ribbon microphones or dancing
at a Thanksgiving celebration, all while
McPherson’s script insists that they’re all sad
and unsupported and suicidal. So at some
point, you just ... divorce the music in your
mind. Experienced as a concert with occa-
sional wrongheaded interruptions, Girl
From the North Country has some gorgeous
stuff in it: the company’s voices sweetly gath-
ered; Bayardelle stripping the paint of the
Belasco walls with her incandescent high
belt; Winningham’s clear voice infusing real
pathos into “Like a Rolling Stone.” Their joy-
ful noise is what I’ll remember. The rest—
let’s agree to forget it. Best to lose some
things to that blowing wind. ■“nooffense,butareyoua human?”
A veteranturnedconstructionworkernamedCaleb(AaronPaul)asks that
question,inseasonthreeofHBO’sWestworld,duringa phonecallwitha company he’d
hopedwouldhirehim.Thephrasingspeakstotheseries’preoccupations:Thefirst two
wordssuggestthat eventhoughhumansarestillincharge oftheplanet, that might not
alwaysbethecase,soit’s smart tobepolitewhenvettingbiologicalbonafides.
Inthefirsttwogo-roundsofHBO’s sci-fi puzzler, inspiredbyMichaelCrichton’s 1973
film,thelifelike robotswereslaves,trappedonanislandwhererichguestsfrequented
amusementparksinspiredbypost–CivilWarAmerica,early-20th-century India, and
17th-centuryJapan,enteringtalesreminiscentofpre-internet role-playinggames and
killing,raping,andotherwiseterrorizingtheresidentandroids(orhosts)onceprefab
displaysofheroismbecamedull.Nowthesyntheticshavestartedtoleavethenest andTV / MATT ZOLLER SEITZBot TopicWestworld returns, both frustratinglydense and curiously compelling.GIRL FROM THE
NORTH COUNTRY
DIRECTED BY CONOR
MCPHERSON.
BELASCO THEATRE.