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.
It wasn’t until a few hours removed from the production — and consulting online sources — that the show’s message finally clicked for me. Perhaps the nontraditional structure of the show made the themes go over my head, but the slice-of-life plot kept me from really connecting with any of the characters. This isn’t due to the fault of the performers or McPherson’s script. Rather, I think this show wasn’t meant to adhere to my sensibilities of storytelling.
The playwright, working with Dylan's blessing but not his participation, created the show as a large ensemble piece that captures several characters at one specific junction in history. When you deduct the length of the songs from the length of a two-act musical, that leaves very little time to explore any character's story in-depth. That has the effect of lightening the narrative load on any given song.
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