Bob Dylan’s Songs as You’ve Never Heard Them in ‘Girl From the North Country’

The first surprise is that Girl From the North Country, which marries the playwriting of Conor McPherson and music and lyrics of Bob Dylan, doesn’t major on Dylan’s raw folkiness. You’d think it might. The play, opening Monday night at New York’s Public Theater, is set in the threadbare, Depression-era year of 1934 in a boarding house in Duluth, Minnesota, full of characters variously luckless, desperate, loving, scamming, and scrabbling.

The marriage of McPherson’s serrated storytelling—where human tragedy and absurdity scythe away alongside each other, producing as many grimaces as laughs—and Dylan’s sharp songwriting would seem like a perfect fit.

But the 20 Dylan songs here impressively span from 1963 (“Girl From the North Country” itself) to 2012 (“Duquesne Whistle”), many rearranged with elements of soul, gospel, and big band, as well as staying true to what Dylan purists would want. The play combines both music and speech; it is not a musical or jukebox musical, or musical with words. Think of it more as a play furnished with Dylan jewels glinting off the prisms of the action.

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