Written and directed by celebrated playwright Conor McPherson and featuring Tony Award-winning orchestrations by Simon Hale, GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY reimagines 20 legendary songs of Bob Dylan as they’ve never been heard before, including "Forever Young," "All Along The Watchtower," "Hurricane," "Slow Train Coming," and "Like A Rolling Stone."
It’s 1934 in Duluth, Minnesota. We meet a group of wayward travelers whose lives intersect in a guesthouse filled with music, life and hope. Experience this "profoundly beautiful" production (The New York Times) brought to vivid life by an extraordinary company of actors and musicians.
Stripped of its score, Girl From the North Country would make a fine straight play, so perhaps its biggest surprise is how the musical’s biggest name — 1960s icon Bob Dylan, who contributed nearly two dozen of his classic songs — takes on a supporting role, rather than hogging the spotlight. Unlike virtually every other jukebox musical, Dylan’s songs are not presented diegetically within the context of a biography, nor are they fully integrated into the dramatic storytelling. Instead, music mostly serves as scene transitions, commenting emotionally or thematically on the action without necessarily being literally related to the lyrics.
Even at intermission on Tuesday night, I thought I was seeing something remarkable. “I’m loving this,” reads a text I sent after the first act. But notebook entries from the second half include “mystic hoo-hah” and “mawkish looong monologue about getting older. Utterly uninteresting compared w/Dylan.” As we left the theater, I told my companion, “I did not expect the strange, beautiful bus would drive off a cliff after intermission.”
2017 | West End |
Original West End Production West End |
2017 | West End |
West End Transfer Production West End |
2018 | Off-Broadway |
Public Theater North American Premiere Off-Broadway |
2019 | West End |
West End Return Engagement West End |
2022 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
2023 | US Tour |
North American Tour US Tour |
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