Review: 'Girl from the North Country' puts darkness in the dark



[ad_1]

From time to time, a number – like the 1966 classic "I Want You" – seems to directly echo the thought of the characters who sing it. Instead, almost everyone in the ensemble enters a choir, with soloists, a convincing equivalent of the Greek chorus that we have never seen before.

What is created, through songs written by Mr. Dylan for more than half a century, is a climate of feeling, as invasive and evasive as fog. It is an atmosphere of despair – with words about the lost chances, a lost love and a persistent loneliness – which finds favor in the communion of voices. come together.

Admittedly, the scenario is as fatalistic as that of a Greek tragedy. Nick Laine (Stephen Bogardus) occupies the city center and rents rooms in his dilapidated house in hopes of preventing foreclosures. His family includes a young alcoholic son, Gene (Colton Ryan), who hopes to be a writer, and an adopted daughter, Marianne (Kimber Sprawl), who is pregnant, but how or by whom no one seems to know.

Nick's wife, Elizabeth (Mare Winningham), is present, but not present, with a dementia that has turned her into a dependent and unruly child with a sailor's mouth. Nick is looking for comfort in the arms of a resident, Mrs. Neilsen (Jeannette Bayardelle), who is waiting to collect money.

Most people here have such expectations. no one really believes in it. The images of lost and murdered children haunt the story, the specters of assassinations and broken hopes.

The Burkes also live on the premises – the braggart and talkative father (Marc Kudisch) and the sleazy mother (Luba Mason) of Elias (Todd Almond), a tall man with a toddler spirit. The newcomers are a man of God who describes himself, Reverend Marlowe (David Pittu), and a former convict and boxer, Joe Scott (Sydney James Harcourt).

[ad_2]
Source link