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So whats left when Dylans literary lyrics are abraded away by deliberate misreadings?
Whats left when all those wildly varying songs are smoothed into pretty, same-sounding mood pieces?
Dylan without the music wins a Nobel but Dylans music without the meaning wins…less.
Dont worry about that title swap out that Girl for a Man.
Doc, when he gets on that Garrison Keillor mic, talks very quickly.
Its the winter of 1934, and the economy is about to tear all these people apart.
You will not hear Blowin in the Wind, my friends.
You will hear Idiot Wind instead; you will hear True Love Tends to Forget.
The Bible salesman (Matt McGrath) with the greasy hair?
A villain, obviously, no need to show us why.
The tall, strong man (Todd Almond) with the mind of child?
But when McPherson writes in Irish stereotype, American eyes smile.
When he rocks up trying to deployourstereotypes?
My eyes got very narrow indeed.
McPhersons main dramaturgical problem here is magnitude.
The size of the show is wrong, the size of the stories, the scenes, everything.
And theres something perverse about the way Dylans lyrics are handled.
We are kind of meant to pay attention to them, kind of not.
For instance, the boxer Joe sings a gale-force version of Hurricane, which is indeed about a boxer.
Those parts, youre allowed to process.
What is signalling here?
The push-me-pull-you annoyance of it leaves you unwilling to parse the lyrics at all.
Senor, senor she croons, scuffing the floor with her shoe.What?You have to laugh.
The lyrics make sense here.
They do in fact want each other but the originally spiky song takes on a new, syrupy flavor.
Its also where McPherson sets up what will become a pattern for how the music functions.
Someone will do something awful.
Lets say Gene shrieks at Kate, driving away a girl who clearly cares for him.
Gene establishes that hes a self-pitying, aggressive creep; Kate establishes that she is out of there.
Because the lyrics dont always mean anything, the music does the talking.
And what it says again and again is: See this person whose behavior is bad?
Underneath, there is a beautiful soul, singing.
As dramatic metaphysics, thats an interesting way to use music.
Ethically, though, Im more than a little troubled at the amount of forgiveness the music ladles out.
So at some point, you just…divorce the music in your mind.
Their joyful noise is what Ill remember.
The restlets agree to forget it.
Best to lose some things to that blowing wind.
Girl From the North Countryis at the Belasco Theatre.
