![]() ![]() This performance, a Sunday matinee, was played to a 50% house. Spooked by Omicron, and perhaps in solidarity with the boycott, audiences have been reluctant to come out and experience it. And regardless of whether you think the song choice and the moment truly cohere, I Want You, sung by Smith Nick and Elizabeth Hay (who plays Gene’s sidelined girlfriend, Katherine) is made to shimmer.Ĭovid-19 hit Girl from the North Country hard during the Sydney festival. Erickson demonstrates a powerful set of pipes late in the piece as the tragic Elias finds his voice. Newman and Francis are in superb voice, too, the latter performing his numbers with a touch of Sam Cook cool. Her singing is this production’s musical highlight. McCune is exceptional as the untethered Elizabeth. Every moment is rendered precisely and the chemistry is at very least persuasive. Weeks on, the production has clearly found its groove. Photograph: Daniel BoudĮarly reviews of this production, which opened at the beginning of the Sydney festival in January, pointed to some under-rehearsal and fitful chemistry. Lisa McCune’s singing is the show’s musical highlight. On the few occasions when they are used in a more traditional jukebox manner – to advance character and/or plot, as when Joe sings Hurricane – it seems oddly clumsy. McPherson draws on the spectrum of Dylan’s back catalogue, numbers dating back to the title song (from 1963’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan) to Duquesne Whistle from the 2012 album Tempest.ĭue to the lyrical complexity of Dylan’s songs, they tend to operate as mood enhancers, with economical arrangements by Simon Hale for piano, fiddle, guitar and drums. Walker also serves as a narrator in what is a memory play with songs. Regular visitors to Nick’s dining table include the ancient Mr Perry (Peter Carroll), who has set his threadbare cap at Marianne, and Dr Walker (Terence Crawford), the local physician who dispenses morphine on demand (mostly to himself, before he got straight). ![]() The most recent arrivals are Joe (Callum Francis), a freshly parolled convict and prizefighter and Marlowe (Grant Piro), an itinerant preacher-cum-crook. There’s also Mrs Neilson (Christina O’Neill), a widow waiting for her financial train to come in – and then to jump on it with Nick. Among the notables are the Burkes (Greg Stone and Helen Dallimore), a once prosperous middle-aged couple on the lam with Elias (Blake Erickson), their shambling, intermittently dangerous boy-man of a son. Photograph: Daniel BoudĬharacters and their various woes are piled higher than Tom Joad’s Hudson. Frankly, I wish this film had stuck more closely to the facts and avoided the phony fireworks at the end.Zahra Newman and Callum Francis. The one-time goofy bartender of "Cheers" actually does very well in the scenes outside the courtroom. She is a gifted actress who deserves better than being asked to stand by like a cigar store Indian while the plaintiff's attorney (Woody Harrelson) commits every procedural violation that could possibly be conceived. For those who haven't seen her on the stage, this may have been the first time most movie goers will have encountered Linda Emond, who plays the defense attorney. The manifest absurdity of the last 15 minutes of the movie undermined (for me) what was otherwise another excellent performance by Charlize Theron and the usual outstanding work of Frances McDormand. Surely it should have been possible for a competent script writer to bring the drama to its conclusion in a more believable way. Dramatic license is certainly forgivable but this film would have been much more effective if not for the beyond-Perry-Mason touches in the courtroom where the plaintiff's case is rescued at the 11th hour and 59th minute by antics that wouldn't pass muster in any courtroom in America, unless the defendant's attorney (Linda Emond) was utterly incompetent and the judge was a blithering idiot. ![]()
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