The Goodman’s production of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh directed by Robert Falls and starring Brian Dennehy and Nathan Lane remains my favorite night of Chicago theater. I also love the music of Bob Dylan and believe he deservedly won the Nobel Prize for Literature that honored his many decades of poetry exploring the backstreets of America and the deep yearnings of the human heart. Furthermore, I’m a fan of Conor McPherson’s work as a playwright. And there’s no denying that the entire cast of the national tour of Girl from the North Country turns in heartbreaking, beautifully sung performances at Broadway in Chicago’s CIBC Theatre.
All that stipulated, I must confess this tale of the woebegone denizens of a Depression-era flophouse in frigid Duluth, Minnesota, is so unrelentingly grim as to be off-putting. What works so brilliantly for O’Neill slips on the ice in McPherson’s work.
One brief example to illustrate: The narrator, a doctor (an amiable Alan Ariano) who repeatedly notes that he’s now dead as he relates the story, delivers one of those coda speeches at the end describing what happened to the major characters after the events depicted in the play. It turns out that one of the men ended up moving to New York City, where he fell in love. Great! Except the romance was a bust, so he ended up enlisting to fight in World War II, where he stepped on a mine on Iwo Jima and was listed as missing in action. Not killed in action, mind you. Missing. Because, we are left to surmise, the mine did such a good job obliterating the guy that they couldn’t identify whatever was left of his body. Okay. Life’s a Bitch, and Then You Die – The Musical!
What’s actually depicted onstage in Girl from the North Country is equally grim. But in fairness, the many, many stories of desperate people doing desperate and often despicable things are leavened with humor and gorgeous interpretations of mostly obscure Dylan songs. The handful of hits employ significant rearrangements to great effect (especially “Hurricane”), which helped win Simon Hale the 2022 Tony Award for Best Orchestrations.
So I’m of two minds about this show, which was too gloomy for several patrons to stay for the second act on the Valentine’s Day opening night. A false ending before the final number occasioned an additional small rush for the exits. But those of us who stayed were rewarded with stories of compelling hard-luck cases with no better options than waiting out a hard winter at the bottom of the boarding-house barrel.
The proprietor, a bitter man facing foreclosure (an always-compelling John Schiappa), made a fatal mistake while minding his little sister when he himself was only a child. His wife (Jennifer Blood, doing a fine job with the play’s trickiest character) is crazy and prone to violent outbursts, but is also a truth-teller. In their own ways, they both are trying to make the best possible life for the young woman who was abandoned in one of the rooms as a baby and who is now a teenager pregnant under mysterious circumstances.
The guests include a rough pair of rogues who may be a failed boxer and a Bible salesman, or perhaps something much worse. There’s also a widow waiting for her late husband’s estate to be settled so she can claim a lucrative inheritance, as well as a failed businessman, his drug-addled wife and their adult special-needs son. It’s a lot to keep track of, and that’s before we get to the stories of townsfolk including the kindly doctor with his own addiction issues and the elderly shoe store owner begging for end-of-life companionship.
Given the title, it’s not surprising to see faint glimmers of hope in the story of Marianne, played with zest and yearning heart by Sharaé Moultrie as the orphan who does not want to settle for the scraps she’s offered by a town that does not exactly welcome Black folk with open arms. Is that a romantic spark we see between her and the emotionally scarred young boxer ably portrayed by Matt Manuel?
For everyone’s sake, let us hope so.
Girl from the North Country runs through February 25 at CIBC Theatre.
For a full roundup of reviews of this show, visit Theatre in Chicago.
Photo by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade
