Like a rolling stone passing through on an idiot wind, “Girl From The North Country” is headed to Pittsburgh.
The North American tour of the second Broadway musical comprised solely of Bob Dylan songs will stop by the Benedum Center from Tuesday through Sunday. Tickets for the fourth show in the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s 2023-24 PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh series are available for $35-$115 via trustarts.org.
“Girl From the North Country” takes place at a boarding house in Duluth, Minnesota, during the Great Depression. Its sprawling cast includes philandering proprietor Nick Laine (John Schiappa); his increasingly unstable wife, Elizabeth (Jennifer Blood); their son, Gene (Ben Biggers), and pregnant adopted daughter, Marianne (Sharaé Moultrie); the Burke family (David Benoit, Jill Van Velzer and Aidan Wharton); Reverend Marlowe (Jeremy Webb); and boxer Joe Scott (Matt Manuel).
Their many individual and interpersonal struggles are soundtracked by 19 Dylan tunes including 1974’s “Forever Young,” 1979’s “Slow Train,” and 1983’s “Jokerman” and “License to Kill.” His music helps communicate characters’ inner turmoil in a way similar to how Green Day and Alanis Morissette’s discographies were utilized in recent jukebox musicals “American Idiot” and “Jagged Little Pill,” respectively.
“They just kind of work,” Blood told the Post-Gazette. “They express the emotional life of the characters after a scene. ... The scenes are the vinegar, and the music is the honey.”
Moultrie used the same analogy in a separate interview to explain how the many intense scenes (vinegar) in “Girl From The North Country” are generally accompanied by the “sweet overlay of emotion” (honey) inherent to so much of Dylan’s decades-spanning musical catalogue.
“At first, it’s kind of like, ‘This is interesting. How’s it going to work?’” Moultrie said. “But I think it really elevates the storytelling in the show. It adds an additional layer of emotion to the scene that’s coming next.”
While this tour served as Moultrie’s introduction to “Girl From The North Country,” Blood and Schiappa were quite familiar with it due to their respective experiences as a swing and ensemble member in the show’s original Broadway production. Blood described it as a “surprising and magical piece” that integrates Dylan’s oeuvre of songs so seamlessly into its narrative that attendees may “hear it and not even recognize them.”
Schiappa wasn’t a huge Dylan acolyte prior to joining the “Girl From The North Country” family, but he has been continuously struck by what a cleverly constructed show it is.
“Sometimes [Dylan’s music] tells the story, sometimes it enhances the moment of the character, sometimes it enhances the narrative,” Schiappa said. “It’s really unique, and if you allow yourself to sit back and enjoy the poetry of it — the magical, mystical way it’s used — it washes over you in a very unique and gratifying way.”
His version of Nick Laine is constantly on edge due to familial stressors and the kind of anxiety inherent to a 1930s-era man who often seems to be “one repair bill away from complete and utter disaster.” Nick actually doesn’t sing at all in “Girl From The North Country” because, as Schiappa put it, “He’s not someone who can easily access his emotions.”
Elizabeth Laine, on the other hand, gets to belt out Dylan’s 1965 classic “Like a Rolling Stone” as a tangential way of expressing herself, despite how difficult it has become for her to form coherent thoughts.
“It’s so fun to get to play someone who’s kind of losing their mind,” Blood said. “There are no rules. You can do anything at any time, and it works because you’re in your own world.”
Then there’s Marianne Laine, who Moultrie believes “has this beam of light and hope within her” that’s in danger of being snuffed out as she desperately attempts to “balance her own challenges with the challenges of her family.” She lends her voice to a few ensemble numbers while also taking the lead on 1985’s “Tight Connection to My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love).”
Both Blood and Moultrie mentioned their admiration for the lighting on numbers such as “Like a Rolling Stone” and 2012’s “Duquesne Whistle,” the latter of which may have derived its title from Duquesne native and jazz legend Earl “Fatha” Hines.
Schiappa has enjoyed observing “how it appeals to and affects” theatergoers in different cities since the tour officially kicked off in October. That first week of performances took place in Minneapolis, and Blood recalled those audiences laughing the hardest at the show’s many Minnesota-specific references.
“Girl From The North Country” may not be set in Western Pennsylvania, but Schiappa thinks Benedum Center patrons will easily identify with its characters’ Rust Belt-adjacent values.
“I always think of Pittsburgh as being a solid, working-class town,” he said. “These are definitely working-class people just fighting to get through every day in Duluth, Minnesota, during the depression. ... I think there’s a lot that Pittsburghers can relate to. I really do.”
Joshua Axelrod: jaxelrod@post-gazette.com and Twitter @jaxelburgh.
First Published: January 8, 2024, 10:30 a.m.
Updated: January 9, 2024, 1:16 p.m.
