With Dylan songbook, "Girl From North Country" is a triumph

NEW YORK – In the midst of "Girl From the North Country" – the musical inspired by Bob Dylan's songbook, which is expected to galvanize the theater season in New York – Mare Winningham raises her beautiful voice and sets the tone.

While Elizabeth Laine, the wife of the owner of the Minnesota store where the events unfold in the North Country Depression took place severely damaged, a splendid Winningham leads a new orchestrated interpretation of one of the rooms Dylan's most loved, "Like a Rolling Stone". "The wonderful sound effect created by screenwriter-director Conor McPherson and 16 other cast members at the off-Broadway public theater is a test and disappointment ennobled by the healing power of singing.

Mare Winningham in "Daughter of the North Country". (Joan Marcus)

"How do you feel, to be alone, without direction, a total stranger, like a rock that rolls?", Sings Winningham, and in light of the fate of Elizabeth – a woman whose The mind is troubled by sorrow – words have a fortuitous authority. She is known and can not be known. It is no different from the other quietly desperate people who ran aground under the roof of Elizabeth and her husband, Nick (Stephen Bogardus), in their Duluth boarding house in 1934.

Few of the other 19 issues of this magnificent evening – an intimate elegance in a time of American sorrow, in the manner of Thornton Wilder or August Wilson – will be immediately recognizable to Dylan's newcomers as "Rolling Stone". Lastly, you're not definitely convinced of the songwriter's friendly theatrical gifts, talents that also made her the only Nobel laureate in rock-and-roll literature, and then you'll be puzzled by all the customers around you, brushing their eyes. they are coming out of the Newman Theater from the audience with you.

Caitlin Houlahan and Colton Ryan. (Joan Marcus)

It is up to Dr. Walker from Robert Joy, general practitioner in a small town, with the kind of tired and torn look that you find in Chekhov's doctors, to stage the events taking place in the House of Laines. to do with the daughter of Marianne Laines. Played with the seductive steel of the gracious Kimber Sprawl, she is an African-American child raised in the Laines, alongside their dissolute son writer, Gene (Colton Ryan). To these are added other portraits remarkably arranged by actors playing tenants: Jeannette Bayardelle, widow, Mrs. Neilson; Marc Kudisch and Luba Mason as Burkes, a couple moved because of bad decisions and forced to take care of an adult autistic son, Elias (Todd Almond); and a snake oil Bible salesman, Reverend Marlowe (David Pittu), who comes in the middle of the night with an ex-convict and former winner, Joe Scott (Sydney James Harcourt).

The musical Dylan-McPherson, which officially opened its doors Monday night at the Newman, was born at the Young Vic Theater in London, triumphantly moved to the West End (where I saw it earlier this year) and now his first American Rue Lafayette. Although the original British cast was excellent, the musical becomes a more credible and moving experience with a team of Americans playing these grassland dwellers become nomadic by desire. If this group of heart-rending souls do not migrate next to a house in the city center, then it will be Broadway who will be the poorest.

Northern country girl , music and lyrics by Bob Dylan, written and directed by Conor McPherson. Sets and costumes, Rae Smith; lighting, Mark Henderson; his, Simon Baker; orchestrations, Simon Hale; movement, Lucy Hind; musical direction, Marco Paguia; Battle Direction, Fight-House of UnkleDave. With Tom Nelis, Matthew Frederick Harris, John Schiappa, Rachel Stern and Chelsea Lee Williams. About 2 hours 15 minutes. Until December 23 at the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St., New York. publictheater.org or 212-967-7555.