On Elizabeth in Girl From The North Country

None of these pictures really show what needs to be shown here; that the character of Elizabeth Laine, played by Shirley Henderson, is one of the most interesting characters I can remember seeing on stage.

In the first few moments of the show, she’s introduced as the dementia-ridden wife of the flophouse’s owner-manager, with a line that implies you’re-not-sure-what at first: “but it hadn’t seemed to change her much” (or something like that).

So she’s old? Maybe? But she looks like a child. Often, she moves like a child; you can see the way she sits in the right-hand image. She has little sense of modesty, and far from the modesty than women in the 19030s were expected to have — she sits with legs open, or strips to her underclothes in the middle of a scene.

At other times, she’s adolescent. She dances in a highly sexual way, even as she appears oblivious to her body and the way it takes up space in the public areas of her home. She shouts memories of her husband pleading for a handjob. Towards the end of the first half, she sings Like A Rolling Stone, a song written by Dylan about the addictions suffered by Brian Jones, and as she does she wears sunglasses and a big cardigan — they exacerbate her crazy but they also create a portal to the 1960s, a glitch in time.

In that way, she is a Puck-like character, or like that ‘seagull’ guy in the parka at the start of Pomona by Alistair McDowall, who stands between worlds — or maybe between eras. She’s onstage almost constantly, timeless and ageless, either pirouetting or grinding or just sitting with a blanket. She’s mostly ignored, until she forces a truth into focus for someone, like she’s some kind of vessel of the future.

Ultimately, her ending is pitiful, but in her madness she is magical.