Penn State Alum Aidan Wharton Goes on Tour After Broadway Debut, Plans Proud Haven Fundraiser
By SHARON EBERSON
Although it’s the real deal, Aidan Wharton’s Broadway debut story sounds as if it jumped out of a Hollywood script,
In December of 2021 – “during the height of Omicron,” he recalls – he got a call to cover a role for a vacationing cast member of Girl From the North Country,
“And then a week later, I was on stage for a role that I had not fully learned yet,” said Wharton, a Penn State alum who came to the mainland from Hawaii to study his craft. “And they were like, ‘You should probably stick around. And so I got to stay with them through closing, and then reopening, and filming and the Tonys.”
The COVID-interrupted show that earned seven Tony Award nominations and won for Simon Hale’s orchestrations of 20 Bob Dylan songs closed for a second time in January 2022. When it was ready to hit the road, Wharton got another call to the North Country.
He was speaking while with the national tour at the Kennedy Center throughout most of December, then it was on to Kansas City before spending a week at the Benedum Center, January 9-14.
coming to Pittsburgh January 9-14. (Image: Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade)
Girl From the North Country fits somewhere between a play with music – or “a play with a soundtrack,” as Wharton puts it – and a straightforward jukebox musical. It takes place in a 1930s, Depression Era boarding house.
“It follows a few days in the lives of this house, and how it brings together people from disparate surroundings and the ways in which they all really beautifully impact each other in this week around Thanksgiving,” Wharton said.
As described by former New York Times critic Ben Brantley, in a glowing review, “Music is what [the characters] have within themselves to keep warm, to keep moving and to keep hearing hope, even if it’s only a whisper.”
Girl From the North Country pairs the award-winning Irish playwright Conor McPherson (The Weir, Shining City, The Night Alive) with Dylan songs that reflect the playwright’s and singer’s oft-explored meditations, often with a supernatural component.
Set in Duluth, where Dylan spent his first six years, songs include “Forever Young,” “All Along The Watchtower,” “Hurricane,” “Slow Train Coming” and “Like A Rolling Stone.”
Dylan’s music also was put to use in Twyla Tharp‘s 2006 dance musical The Times They Are a-Changin’, which received just 35 previews and 28 performances on Broadway.
McPherson’s Dylan-infused piece, which began in London’s West End, was nominated for five Olivier Awards and won two in 2018, when its chief rival was Hamilton.
(Image: Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade)
Central to the story is the Laine family and the friends and acquaintances who occupy their struggling boarding house on the shores of Lake Superior. During a late-night winter storm in 1934, two guests arrive seeking shelter, and their entrance has wide-ranging implications for everyone in the house.
Wharton got to work with writer-director McPherson for the first time during preparations for the tour.
“What I love is that in all of his work, it is very down to earth, and yet there is this sort of mystical presence throughout the show. I think we really explored that in a different way on the tour than we did on Broadway,” Wharton said. “I think that lends itself to Dylan’s music well, because his poetry is so exquisite but also sort of elevates it with a really conversational language. The way he puts his words together brings something mystical out of it that I think Conor does as well.”
Few songs marry the writer’s and songwriter’s sensibilities as well as Dylan’s mysterious “Duquesne Whistle,” from the 2012 Tempest album and sung by Wharton’s character. The song was named for the train service that once ran between New York City’s and Pittsburgh’s Penn Stations, now served by Amtrack’s Pennsylvanian route.
Wharton plays Elias Burke, the child of guests of the boarding house who had been traveling since Mr. Burke lost his business in the crash. Todd Almond originated the role, which Wharton covered on Broadway. McPherson, who also directs, “is not precious” about his work, Wharton. The writer-director has allowed touring actors some freedom to make the character their own.
“I sort of have a youthful joy that I think I get to really explore with Elias, in his sense of innocence,” Wharton said. “So much of the play is about hard people having to make hard choices, and Elias sort of moves through the world in a different head space than the rest of them.
“To be able to come back and revisit such a special play has been such an incredible experience,” he continued. “And to watch how the people who are brand new to the piece bring their own sentiment and their own character has been really, really cool.”
MAN ON A MISSION
In the time between Broadway and the tour, Wharton developed the evolving GayBuffet, available on Substack and Instagram. What started as a general newsletter “about all things LGBTQ,” took shape as dives into gay history in the places he would visit while traveling.
While Wharton has been on the road, he has used GayBuffet as a vehicle for fundraising for hyper-local LGBTQIA+ organizations. In Pittsburgh, he will shine a light on Proud Haven, whose mission is “to provide a safe shelter for LGBTQIA+ youth (ages 18-25) experiencing homelessness in Pittsburgh [and to] provide emotional support and resources to help LGBTQIA+ youth develop the skills needed to live independently. “
“I wanted to make some sort of little difference on tour, if I could,” Wharton said. “I was like, I’m going to all these places, LGBTQ rights are under attack at this moment, and I want to highlight what these people are doing around the country in places that aren’t the liberal coastal cities. And so that’s how it started. And it sort of has morphed into every city, I partner with a nonprofit and do a fundraiser on my Instagram.”
Proud Haven, he said, fits the nonprofit, grassroots type of organizations that are vital within thei communities.
“I’m not out here raising thousands and thousands of dollars,” he said. “So I want to find ones where the little bit that we and I can do really can go a long way.”
TICKETS AND DETAILS
PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh presents Girl From the North Country at the Benedum Center January 9-14, 2023. Tickets: visit https://trustarts.org/production/86816/girl-from-the-north-country or call 412-456-4800.
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