It’s a boarding house in Duluth, Minnesota in the 1930s and the Depression is not only in full swing, but it won’t be ending any time soon (1941). The people living there, the boarders as well as the family in residence are scraping along, just trying to survive.
Jennifer Blood plays Elizabeth Laine, the head of the family operating the board house in the Tony Award-winning Girl From the North Country about to open at Broadway at the Hobby. Her character Elizabeth is not only struggling financially — the boarding house is facing foreclosure — but mentally as well.
“Most of her life she’s been the person in control and her husband kind of followed her along. But she’s losing her mind struggling with what may be dementia. So Nick her husband has to take over,” Blood says. Problem is, he’s made some bad investments in the past; the Laines have no money, and if he can’t work something out, they will be homeless.
Nick is trying to find places for everyone before the bank shuts them down.
Written and directed by renowned Irish playwright Conor McPherson (The Weir, The Seafarer) the stories of Laine’s family and her boarders are accompanied by 20 “re-imagined” Bob Dylan songs including “Slow Train Coming, “Hurricane, “Forever Young” and “Like a Rolling Stone.” Blood stresses, however, that the songs aren’t there to move the story along. In fact, at times the song being sung has little or no connection to the unfolding plot, she says.
“When I got the audition for this I read the script and thought ‘I don’t know what to do with these songs.'” Blood says. “When I went for the first day of rehearsal and sitting there it just washed over me. I saw how it works.”
The national tour is a special triumph for Blood who spent a long time standing in the wings in the Broadway production, waiting for her chance to go on for this and three other roles. “I went on quite a bit because of COVID,” she says. Now she’s happy that the role of Elizabeth Laine is all hers.
Other members of the Laine family include a son Gene and adopted daughter Marianne, who is pregnant with no husband. “The son is an alcoholic and they want him to leave. He has no job,” Blood says. Playing Elizabeth is fascinating , Blood says. “It’s like she gets a feeling about something in the room and wants to communicate about it. A lot of the time she’ll bring a different story in that had a similar feeling tp what’s going on.”
And then there are the boarders, some of whom move in and out of the play. Things come to a pivotal moment when during a night’s storm, a Bible salesman and a boxer, not thriving in his chosen career, come looking for a place to stay.
Although all this sounds like a situation devoid of hope, Blood says there is humor in the script. She recounts a performance in Dallas that had the audience members laughing. In all there are 17 actors including two who also are in the band, while an additional four musicians are band-only performers onstage. The poetry of Dylan’s lyrics in a highlight, she says.
One thing she noted about the costumes: they are so authentic to the ’30s, that the cast has a habit of running through them kind of quickly, especially the dresses which she describes as being like paper.
Why should Houston audiences come to see this?
“Because it is like nothing you’ve ever seen,” Blood says. “It hits you in these surprising ways. I’ve seen a zillion times. There is something sort of magical and hard to understand about why it is so moving and beautiful.”
Performances are scheduled for April 30 through May 5 at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday, 1:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sunday at the Hobby Center, 800 Bagby. For more information, call 713-315-2525 or visit broadwayattjehobbycenter.com or thehobbycenter.org. $35-$95.
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This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
