028 – Girl from the North Country by Conor McPherson, music and lyrics by Bob Dylan
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Conor McPherson’s Girl from the North Country is an extraordinary collaboration between the playwright and musician and song writer Bob Dylan. In fact it was a silent collaboration of sorts, as Dylan granted McPherson carte blanche to create his play around his music without any direction or constraints. The result is a magical work where McPherson’s portrait of families struggling to find hope or security in Depression America is transfigured into an uplifting spiritual experience by the ravishing period arrangements of Dylan’s songs.
The play, directed by McPherson, opened at the Old Vic Theatre in London in 2017 to a rapturous response and reviews, including acclaim such as: “Not very often, a piece of theatre comes along that radiates an ineffable magic.” ; “Beguiling and soulful and quietly, exquisitely, heartbreaking. This is, in short, a very special piece of theatre.”
The Old Vic production was followed by two West End runs and transfers to off-Broadway and Broadway in New York. It garnered many award nominations here and in America, winning several, although I can’t help but think it would have swept the board if it fit more easily into the conventional award categories of play or musical. But as the reviews suggest, it is something very special, which I can personally attest to because I’m happy to confess that Girl from the North Country moved me to tears both times that I saw it.
So this is a very special episode, first because I am privileged to talk with none other than the play’s author Conor McPherson, and secondly because we have also been given kind permission to include several extracts from the original cast recording of the music from the first London production. You can listen to the whole album on Spotify by following this link to the London production.
Note: this episode contains a couple of instances of strong language (among all of its beauty!).
Conor McPherson
Conor McPherson is from Dublin and began writing plays as a member of the University of Dublin drama society. His early plays include St Nicholas, Shining City, The Seafarer, and The Weir, which opened at the Royal Court before transferring to the West End of London and Broadway, winning the Olivier Award for Best New Play for 1999. It was produced again in the West End in 2013. In 2011 the National Theatre in London premiered his play The Veil, which marked his first foray into period drama and was greeted by critical acclaim. More recently, following Girl from the North Country, Conor’s wonderfully lucid adaptation of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya was staged in the West End, and broadcast on BBC in December 2020, and on PBS in America in the Spring of 2021. Conor’s adaptation was the inspiration for our episode on Uncle Vanya, in which we talked with Nick Hern the publisher of his version of the play. Click here to listen to that episode.
Recommended Play
Conor recommended The Wexford Trilogy by Billy Roche.
Author photo by Mel Melcon
The Footnotes to our episode on Girl from the North Country include brief thoughts on Elizabeth’s ability to see and say the truth, as well as more on the echoes of Chekhov in Conor’s play.
046 – All My Sons, by Arthur Miller
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Arthur Miller’s breakthrough play All My Sons is both a searing family tragedy and an exploration of the moral challenges that Miller believed were inherent in the American Dream. Douglas Rintoul has recently directed a wonderful production of this devastating play at the Queen’s Theatre in Hornchurch.
045 – Top Girls, by Caryl Churchill
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Caryl Churchill’s play Top Girls was a powerful critique of Thatcherite Britain when it was written in 1982. It’s rightly renowned for its theatrical invention and innovative structure, and remains relevant for its enduring questions about the opportunities, and opportunity costs, for women across the ages. Professor Elaine Aston joins me to survey this modern classic.
044 – Clybourne Park, by Bruce Norris
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It is 1959 and Russ and Bev have sold their 3-bedroom bungalow in the all-white neighbourhood of Clybourne Park in Chicago to a “coloured family”. The sale sparks heated debate between neighbours in Bruce Norris’s Pulitzer Prize winning play Clybourne Park. Oliver Kaderbhai, director of the current revival at the Park Theatre in London, joins me to discuss this provocative and corruscatingly funny play.
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