The remount of Conor McPherson and Bob Dylan’s Girl From The North Country comes to Cardiff this month. Hari Berrow checks in with actor Ross Carswell to see how the tour is going. 

Conor McPherson is best known as a playwright, having received multiple awards and nominations for his plays The Weir and The Seafarer, amongst numerous others. Ross Carswell and the cast of Girl From The North Country – the UK tour of which arrives in Cardiff this month – are in a fairly unique position for musical performers: one where the script is as meaty as the score.

“As the actor, you’re given the best of both worlds,” Carswell tells me. “In other musicals, the music is used as a kind of narrative device, but there’s this magical thing with the music in this show where it feels like it’s almost unlocking the character. Girl In The North Country is set right in the middle of the depression in America, and everyone is trying to protect themselves.

“Many of the characters are there because they’ve lost everything and the future is grim, so the scenes are quite dark, then the music gives you this release where you see their joy and hope. Having such honest music, I think it gives the show a really cathartic quality. There are moments of just pure awe. Every night listening to it and doing it, I still get really fuelled by it; it’s really special.”

Many jukebox musicals work to faithfully recreate the original feel of the music, but here Bob Dylan’s songs have been adapted to fit 1930s America. “Our brilliant orchestrator, Simon Hale, took all the music that Conor wanted to serve the story and he completely reimagined all the songs,” Carswell explains. “All the music is played by instruments that would be present at that time. We’ve got a gorgeous four-piece band that swaps between piano, harmonium, the fiddle, the mandolin, the double bass, and guitar. We’re not even that aware that the music isn’t of the time because it’s so intrinsic to the story and the character. The sound just is of that time.”

Girl From The North Country tackles many historic and current social issues, from experiencing racism to living with disability. The creative team took the responsibility of portraying these issues seriously. “The company was really on top of things: they had an intimacy co-ordinator and a fight director, we had a company that specialised in autism in the arts come in to talk with us, and we had an open forum with the cast to discuss racism and how we felt when approaching the script.

“To tell a story honestly you have to be able to lean into how things were at that time, but everything has to be approached with respect and sensitivity – even if the characters don’t handle them that way. We as a company were very good with chatting about it and knowing the boundaries. It feels, and I hope it is, a safe space for everyone, including the audience.”

Carswell’s character, Elias Burke, lives with a debilitating learning difficulty. He and the creative team worked hard to present the human, rather than the disability.

“My basis for it came solely from the script, in which it says he has the mind of a four-year-old,” says Carswell. “I thought the best to way to serve Elias as a character was to go back in myself and ask what I was like as a child, and really focus on the positive qualities that a child has: curiosity, openness, vulnerability.

“I think for us as the cast and company it would have been a detriment for us to try and name it, rather than playing him as a character and playing his qualities. It feels sensitive and it feels honest – I’m playing Elias rather than a learning difficulty.”

Audiences who’ve seen the show before are not at risk of seeing something stale. The remount offers a new experience as well as a new cast. 

“Even though the play’s been on a few times now, Conor and the creative team gave us a lot of free reign to explore and ask questions and play. They never said, ‘this is the point where you stand there and you say the line like this,’” Carswell smiles. “We’ve had a few people from the West End cast come and they’ve said, ‘gosh, it’s so different from when we did it!’ – I think that’s really exciting. It means the show has a new life every time it’s on.”

Girl From The North Country, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay, Tue 6-Sat 10 Dec. Tickets: £15.50-£45.50. Info: here

words HARI BERROW