OTHER PLAYS BY CONOR MCPHERSON PUBLISHED BY TCG
Dublin Carol
The Night Alive and Other Plays
Also Includes:
The Birds
The Veil
The Dance of Death
Port Authority
The Seafarer
Shining City
The Weir and Other Plays
Also Includes:
St. Nicholas
This Lime Tree Bower
The Good Thief
Rum and Vodka
Girl from the North Country (the play) is copyright © 2017 by Conor McPherson
Introduction is copyright © 2017 by Conor McPherson
Copyright information for the individual songs can be found on page 95.
Girl from the North Country is published by Theatre Communications Group, Inc., 520 Eighth Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10018-4156.
This volume is published in arrangement with Nick Hern Books Limited, The Glasshouse, 49a Goldhawk Road, London, W12 8QP.
All rights whatsoever in this play are strictly reserved. Requests to produce the text in whole or in part should be addressed to the publisher.
Applications for performance in excerpt or in full by non-professionals in the English language throughout the world should be addressed, in the first instance, to the Performing Rights Manager, Nick Hern Books, The Glasshouse, 49a Goldhawk Road, London W12 8QP, telephone +44 (0)20 8749 4953, email nickhernbooks.co.uk, except for the U.S. and Canada, see details below.
Applications for performance by professionals in any medium and in any language throughout the world (and for stock and amateur performances in the U.S. and Canada) should be addressed to Curtis Brown Ltd, Haymarket House, 28-29 Haymarket, London SW1Y 4SP, telephone +44 (0)20 7393 4400, fax +44 (o)20 7393 4401, email [email protected].
No performance of any kind may be given unless a license has been obtained. Applications should be made before rehearsals begin. Publication of this play does not necessarily indicate its availability for performance.
This publication is made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
TCG books are exclusively distributed to the book trade by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-55936-882-7 (ebook)
Cover image copyright by CLIPART LLC
First TCG Edition, October 2017
For Fionnuala and Sumati
CONTENTS
Introduction
by Conor McPherson
Girl from the North Country
Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION
Maybe five years ago I was asked if I might consider writing a play to feature Bob Dylan’s songs. I initially didn’t feel this was something I could do and I had cast it out of my mind when, one day, walking along, I saw a vision of a guesthouse in Minnesota in the 1930s.
I had been in Minnesota twice in the years leading up to this – both times in the dead of winter. The friendliness of the people, the dry frozen wind, the vast distance from home, these things had stayed with me. And I saw a way Mr Dylan’s songs might make sense in a play.
I was invited to write down the idea I had seen and send it to Bob Dylan. A few days later I heard back that Mr Dylan liked the idea and was happy for me to proceed. Just like that.
And then I received forty albums in the post, covering Mr Dylan’s career. While I owned Dylan albums already, like Desire and Blood on the Tracks, and loved many of his songs (often without knowing he’d written them) performed by hundreds of artists from The Byrds to Fairport Convention, I had no idea of the real search he had been on his whole life.
It strikes me that many of Mr Dylan’s songs can be sung at any time, by anyone in any situation, and still make sense and resonate with that particular place and person and time. When you realise this you can no longer have any doubt you are in the presence of a truly great, unique artist.
Working on our production of Girl from the North Country, sometimes I would wake in the night with a Bob Dylan song going round in my head. The next day I would come into rehearsals and we’d learn the song and put it in the show. Did it fit? Did it matter? It always fit somehow.
Many books have been written in an attempt to explore this universal power. Even though Mr Dylan will say he’s often not sure what his songs mean, he always sings them like he means them. Because he does mean them. Whatever they mean.
Every time I hear these songs I see a picture like I’m watching a movie. Sometimes it’s the same, sometimes it’s different, but you always see something.
Like Philip Larkin, like James Joyce, Mr Dylan has the rare power of literary compression. Images and conceits are held in unstable relations, forcing an atomic reaction of some kind, creating a new inner world.
But let’s talk about his musicality. Spending time with his music has taught me a few things: Firstly, writing something that sounds original is rare, but writing something that sounds original and simple at the same time is the mark of genius. Anyone can keep making things more complicated, but to keep a song simple, like it somehow always existed and would have surely been written by someone, someday… try writing that one.
Secondly, Mr Dylan always goes through the right musical door. Listening to a Bob Dylan song is like being in a room you’ve never been in before. It’s full of characters and images and tons of musical atmosphere. But then Bob changes the chords, moving through a bridge or a chorus, and a door opens up in that room, so you go through that door into another room – but it’s always the right door.
Thirdly, Mr Dylan sings about God a lot. Sometimes God appears as an impossible reflection of yourself. Sometimes as someone you could never know. But however God appears, however Mr Dylan begs for mercy, you understand that cry.
Anyway, I write this on the eve of moving from the rehearsal room to the theatre. Whatever happens next I have no idea. All I can say with any certainty is that having had Mr Dylan’s trust to create a piece of work using his songs has been one of the great artistic privileges of my life.
Conor McPherson
London, 2017
Girl from the North Country premiered at The Old Vic, London, on 8 July 2017, with the following cast:
MARIANNE LAINE
Sheila Atim
DR WALKER
Ron Cook
MRS BURKE
Bronagh Gallagher
ELIZABETH LAINE
Shirley Henderson
NICK LAINE
Ciarán Hinds
KATHERINE DRAPER
Claudia Jolly
JOE SCOTT
Arinzé Kene
MRS NEILSEN
Debbie Kurup
ENSEMBLE
Kirsty Malpass
MR PERRY
Jim Norton
ENSEMBLE
Tom Peters
ENSEMBLE
Karl Queensborough
GENE LAINE
Sam Reid
REVEREND MARLOWE
Michael Shaeffer
ELIAS BURKE
Jack Shalloo
MR BURKE
Stanley Townsend
MUSICIANS
Violin & Mandolin
Charlie Brown
Guitars
Pete Callard
Double Bass
Don Richardson
Director
Conor McPherson
Music and Lyrics
Bob Dylan
Designer
Rae Smith
Orchestrator, Arranger and Mus
ical Supervisor
Simon Hale
Lighting Designer
Mark Henderson
Sound Designer
Simon Baker
Musical Director
Alan Berry
Movement Director
Lucy Hind
Casting Director
Jessica Ronane CDG
GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY
CHARACTERS
NICK LAINE, early fifties, proprietor
ELIZABETH LAINE, early fifties, his wife
MARIANNE LAINE, nineteen, their daughter
GENE LAINE, twenty, their son
MRS NEILSEN, early forties, a widow
MR BURKE, fifties, erstwhile factory owner
MRS BURKE, fifties, his wife
ELIAS BURKE, thirty, their son
JOE SCOTT, late twenties, a boxer
REVEREND MARLOWE, fifties, a Bible salesman
MR PERRY, early sixties, a shoe-mender
DR WALKER, middle-aged, a physician
KATHERINE (KATE) DRAPER, Gene’s ex-girlfriend
SETTING
A fair-sized family house, which is now serving as a guesthouse in Duluth, Minnesota. Winter, 1934.
NOTE ON LYRICS
An ellipsis (…) on its own line indicates an omitted verse or chorus from within the original song.
This text went to press before the end of rehearsals and so may differ slightly from the play as performed.
ACT ONE
Actors and musicians on stage to get ready for the live broadcast. Someone sits a piano and plays and sings. A drummer, double-bass player and guitar player join in along the way, as do the cast, harmonizing.
Sign On The Window
Sign on the window says ‘Lonely’
Sign on the door said ‘No Company Allowed’
Sign on the street says ‘Y’ Don’t Own Me’
Sign on the porch says ‘Three’s A Crowd’
Sign on the porch says ‘Three’s A Crowd’
…
Looks like a-nothing but rain…
Sure gonna be wet tonight on Main Street…
Hope that it don’t sleet
The band take the music down for a few bars while a middle-aged actor approaches the microphone:
DR WALKER. Tonight’s story begins and ends at a guesthouse in Duluth, Minnesota, in the winter of 1934. Back here – some of the guests we’ll meet along the way.
The rising light reveals two figures in the dining room where there’s a table for eating at, some easy chairs near a stove, a dresser, a piano. ELIZABETH, fifties, sits at the piano picking out a tune. She has early-onset dementia. Her husband, NICK, is the same age as ELIZABETH but an agitated energy makes him seem younger somehow. He puts on an apron and starts working, setting the table for their guests.
This is Nick Laine. That’s his wife there, Elizabeth. Nick inherited this house from his granddaddy, but he never had no head for business. First he lost the stables and stud, then all the stocks. Managed to remortgage the house long enough for Elizabeth to turn it into decent boarding rooms.
But she hasn’t been so good lately. Her dementia crept in so insidiously, so gradually, crueler folk in town said you’d be hard pushed to know the difference. Nick’s tryna take care of everything. Trying real hard. Like a man tryna to run through a wall tries real hard.
My name is George Arthur Walker. I’m a doctor. Least I was. Back when this was our world. I healed some bodies in pain. But as we know pain comes in all kinds. Physical, spiritual. Indescribable.
I’ll come in the story later, but right now, all you need to know is Nick’s made some stew for his family, for the guests. Keep everybody alive another day.
The last verse is sung while NICK spoons stew in a bowl to cool for ELIZABETH. The song finishes out…
NICK. Elizabeth. (Pause.) Elizabeth.
She ignores him.
Elizabeth. Sit down, I’ll give you something to eat.
ELIZABETH’s expression suggests her absence, her presence. She looks at him but otherwise ignores his requests. She goes, bends down under a chair and retrieves a little box. She turns away, hiding it from NICK. She opens it, counts through some dollars in there, and closes it again quickly.
Sit down. Come on. Supper.
Exasperated, he puts her meal down on the table and comes to her, guiding her towards the easy chair near the stove. She resists. This becomes a silent battle of wills as they slowly wrestle. She is surprisingly strong. NICK gives up, angrily walking away and tossing a plate across the table. She remains standing.
Alright. Well. Alright.
ELIZABETH. I can hear it.
NICK. What.
ELIZABETH. The girl down the hole.
NICK looks at her.
NICK. What?
ELIZABETH. Girl down the hole.
NICK is startled by someone coming through the kitchen.
NICK. Hello?
NICK sees GENE in the kitchen.
Oh.
GENE. Yeah, ‘Oh…’
NICK. What are you doing scratching around like that?
GENE. What? I’m hungry!
NICK. You know what time it is? You’re only coming in?
GENE. I was working late.
NICK. Working my ass.
GENE. I was working!
NICK. You were drinking.
GENE. You have to drink if you want to sit at the bar.
NICK. Who works in a bar?! You can’t work in your room?
GENE. No I can’t work in my room.
NICK. Why?
GENE comes to the table, putting a book down, picking at bread, while NICK continues his work.
GENE. It’s too stultifying.
NICK. Well excuse me! I saw you got a letter. Huh?
GENE. Yeah.
NICK. New York postmark.
GENE. It was nothing.
NICK. Yeah?
GENE. Yeah, nothing, you know.
NICK. You should let me read, you know, some of your stories, some time.
GENE. Yeah?
NICK. Hey I been around.
GENE. Yeah.
NICK. Yeah. I’ve lived. You can’t see it ’cause as far as you’re concerned I’m just the old dumb-bell round here. I could read ’em. Tell ya where you might need a little… you know. A little life. A little real life. Maybe we could turn some a those rejection slips into pay cheques, huh?
GENE. Now I know you’re desperate.
NICK. Desperate? Well…
GENE. Two minutes ago it wasn’t even work, now you wanna do it for me?
NICK. Hey don’t ambush me with my own double standards. You don’t even know what work is. Get a job, you’ll know all about it. What it does to you.
GENE. Get a job where?
NICK (to himself). Scribbling in a book isn’t work.
GENE. Get a job where?
NICK. Hm?
GENE. Get a job where?
NICK. What are you asking me for? The Twin Cities! I don’t know! You and your sister are too damn spoiled. You wanna give me some help here?
GENE. What do you want?
NICK. Lay the table. Feed your mother.
GENE. She doesn’t want me feeding her!
NICK. You do it too fast. Let her chew, for Christ’s sake! You let it all go down her chin, of course she doesn’t like it.
GENE. She doesn’t like me doing it, she doesn’t like me… [doing it.]
NICK. It’s because you don’t pay attention.
NICK is checking his watch with the clock on the wall. Underscore begins for ‘Went To See The Gypsy’.
GENE. What’s up your nose all of a sudden?
NICK. What?
GENE. Why you so on edge?
NICK. I’m not on edge.
GENE. No, huh?
MRS NEILSEN, a woman in her early forties, comes into focus. She wears a skirt with pockets in it. When she has her hands in her pockets she takes on a kind of lounging adolescent rebelliousness.
She sings.
Went To See The Gypsy
Went to see the gypsy
Stayin’ in a big hotel
He smiled when he saw me coming
And he said, ‘Well, well, well’
His room was dark and crowded
Lights were low and dim
‘How are you?’ he said to me
I said it back to him
I went down to the lobby
To make a small call out
A pretty dancing girl was there
And she began to shout
‘Go on back to see the gypsy
He can move you from the rear
Drive you from your fear
Bring you through the mirror
He did it in Las Vegas
Girl from the North Country Page 1