The Night the Lights Went Out on Broadway

‘GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY,’ BELASCO THEATER, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2020, 8 P.M.

WHO KNEW IT WAS CLOSING NIGHT? Mare Winningham and Jay O. Sanders as a couple who run a boardinghouse in Depression-era Minnesota in “Girl From the North Country,” which transferred to the Belasco Theater last month. And unceremoniously closed, along with every other theater production in town.

MY PRESS-NIGHT GUEST and I talked about whether to go at all. SMP and I had confirmed the date weeks before. Back when coronavirus was a vague, disturbing but very distant international news story.

I knew that the show, Conor McPherson’s “Girl From the North Country,” built on Bob Dylan’s music, was great, because I had seen the Off Broadway production at the Public Theater a few months before.

SMP and I checked in with each other the day before (March 10); things were feeling a little sketchy in New York by then. We decided that yes, we’d go. But we’d avoid mass transit — being squeezed in with possibly sick people on the subway — and take a taxi, both ways.

WE AGREED THAT WE didn’t want to go to a bar or restaurant, where we’d be surrounded by other (possibly infected) people. During a plague, everybody looks sick. So we had wine and some munchies at SMP’s apartment, three blocks from mine. Then we grabbed a cab.

I didn’t visit the theater bar, beforehand or between acts, because we’d already had wine, but I did decide to go to the ladies’ room at intermission. I came back to my seat, feeling mildly panicked. and told SMP, “I now feel terrified because I touched so many things on my way to and from the bathroom.” (This was before we all started wearing plastic gloves.)

THE TIMES THEY WERE A-CHANGIN’ Todd Almond, center, leads one of the group numbers in “Girl From the North Country.” The production’s 20 or so Dylan songs include “Like a Rolling Stone,” “I Want You” and “Forever Young.”

OUR STROKE OF LUCK? SMP was apparently the last woman in Manhattan to have Purell, the hand sanitizer, in her purse. She shared it with me. And with the very nice couple sitting to our right. I hope they’re O.K. now too. (We were in Row E, house right.)

The show, directed by Conor McPherson, the Irish genius who also wrote the book, was piercingly beautiful. Again. So many intriguing characters wandering through the Depression gloom in a big, rambling Minnesota boardinghouse.

Among them: The owners, the Laines (Jay O. Sanders and Mare Winningham). She has dementia and keeps making uncomfortably true observations. He’s having an affair with a boarder who’s waiting for a life-changing insurance payment. The Burkes (Marc Kudisch and Luba Mason) and their grown son (Todd Almond), whose mental deficiencies may lead to enormous trouble. The Laines’ grown daughter (Kimber Elayne Sprawl), who is single and pregnant. the Bible salesman. The boxer.

I HAVE A NEW appreciation for Winningham (in photo) as an actress, a powerful singer and a general talent who wears her tortured soul on her sleeve. (You know there were hints as long ago as “St. Elmo’s Fire,” but it’s come into full flower in this role.) was amazed, again, that Dylan numbers I had thought of as moody guitar and vocal solos worked so well — no, not so well, so magically — as big group numbers.

BOY FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY (THEN AND NOW) Bob Dylan was born on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minn. The family moved 75 miles north (yes, north) to Hibbing. He spent a year at the University of Minnesota and by early 1961 was in New York, playing at Greenwich Village clubs.

WE LEFT THE THEATER the same way people always do — inch by inch, following the slowpokes to the back of the aisle. We got a taxi on Eighth Avenue the way we always do. We didn’t hug or air-kiss good night, the way we normally would

The next day, gatherings of 500 or more people were temporarily banned in New York City. There was no performance that night.

So many brand-new shows or just-about-to-open productions have disappeared. For instance, we may never see Laurie Metcalf and Rupert Everett as Martha and George in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” And the new version of “Company,” the one with Bobby, the commitment--reluctant 35-year-old New Yorker, as a woman? The lucky ones saw it in London. The New York staging never made it to opening night.

The Broadway theaters still stand there, from 41st Street to 55th or so, their marquee titles and star names still in place. At least I think they do. I haven’t been anywhere near Times Square since that night. But there’s a 99.99 percent chance that this, too, shall pass — that live theater will return in all its glory. We’ll figure out the economic parts when we get to the other side.