Last Updated on October 9, 2025
Smash hit musical Girl from the North Country returns to The Old Vic.
4.0 out of 5.0 starsWhen writer and director Conor McPherson was approached to write a theatrical production using the songs of Bob Dylan, he had never before created a musical. Girl From The North Country was the result, and since it premiered at The Old Vic in 2017, it has travelled to three continents and garnered multiple Tony and Olivier awards. It returns for a limited run to where its success first began.
Set in Duluth, Minnesota, in the winter of 1934, the drama unfolds against the backdrop of the Great Depression. A run-down boarding house belongs to Nick Laine (Colin Conor), who is trying to stave off the bank foreclosing on the property and rendering his family homeless. His wife, Elizabeth (Katie Brayben), has early dementia. Their adopted daughter, Marianne (Justina Kehinde), is pregnant at 19, and her father is trying to arrange a marriage to the aged shoe mender, Mr Perry (Teddy Kempner). Son Gene (Colin Bates) aspires to be a writer but struggles with alcoholism. Nick is having an affair with one of the residents, Mrs Neilsen (Maria Omakinwa), a widow waiting for probate for her late husband’s will. The Burke family has fallen on hard times, as their business has been lost in the crash, and they are struggling with their son, Elias (Steffan Harri), who has learning difficulties. One stormy night, bible salesman, Rev Marlowe (Eugene McCoy), and boxer, Joe Scott (Sifiso Mazibuko), arrive at the guesthouse, adding to the personal dramas unfolding in the boarding house.
This complex story of economic and emotional hardship during the Great Depression is certainly reminiscent of Steinbeck’s novels set in the same period and is also influenced by Eugene O’Neill, whose characters struggle with poverty, addiction, and social upheaval. If the production had trigger warnings, the list would be comprehensive – racism, sexual abuse, addiction, teenage pregnancy, mental health challenges, suicide, and a bit of blackmail. That is a lot of content to pack into an evening of musical theatre, resulting in no single story or theme being explored in depth. If anything, there are too many characters and too many stories in Girl from the North Country. I was left feeling unmoved by any of them.
Duluth is the birthplace of Bob Dylan, whose music forms the soundtrack to Girl from the North Country. Writer and Director, Conor McPherson, wanted the songs to reflect the inner portraiture of the characters. There is an interweaving of plot, character, and lyrics. Some of the characters have been written around the songs themselves. For example, there is a strong rendition of Hurricane in the production, a song that Dylan wrote, based on a black boxer, Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, who was imprisoned wrongfully for murder. This is the backstory of the character, Joe Scott.
For those of us who grew up on a diet of Bob Dylan’s lyrics, Girl From The North Country offers much to enjoy. Not only is it joyful to listen to the musical arrangements (Simon Hale), but period instruments transport the music back in time, to a period that pre-dates Dylan himself. Dylan, hailed by many as a prophet, wrote lyrics that are pure poetry – he won the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature. The lyrics are timeless with themes of freedom of expression, political upheaval, racism, inequality, love and loss, and seem to speak as much to our own troubled times as they did to the 1960s. There are over 20 of Dylan’s songs in Girl from the North Country, including big hitters such as Like a Rolling Stone, Hurricane, All Along the Watchtower, Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here with You, and Lay, Lady, Lay. There are also many lesser-known songs. The music spans Dylan’s career from 1963 to 2012, taking in his religious phase, songs from his Saved (1980) album used to powerful effect in McPherson’s exploration of the theme of redemption. The finale rendition of Pressing On packed a considerable punch.
The cast comprises 23 actors and musicians. The singing was outstanding, and this production reveals Bob Dylan’s music in a way you might never have heard it before, with excellent musical arrangements and brilliant vocal performances. Some of the acting was inconsistent. At points, both the script and performance felt somewhat wooden, but when the characters burst into song, they conveyed the emotions of their characters with a spine-tingling effect. “I Want You” was one example of this, while “Forever Young” felt painfully poignant. The women were particularly skilled in both acting and singing, with strong performances from Justina Kahinde as Marianne and Maria Omakinwa as Mrs Nielsen. The night belonged to the dementing Elizabeth Laine, who not only had some of the best lines, but Katie Brayben had a soaring vocal range and an uncanny ability to invoke the spirit of Dylan. Her rendition of Like a Rolling Stone was quite unlike any I’ve heard before.
The sombre set (Rae Smith) had moveable parts which at points made space for the ensemble to dance and at other times transformed into some memorable tableaux. This was enhanced by skilful lighting design (Mark Henderson). In one scene, the Laine family ate dinner silently, the stage lit like an Old Masters painting, with the scraping of the cutlery integrated into the soundscape (Simon Baker). Some lovely silhouetting of the ensemble was also most effective, as was the intermittent use of projected imagery onto screens.
Girl From The North Country is a production that Bob Dylan fans will relish – a mix of drama, music, and terrific singing.
Girl From The North Country runs until 23 August 2025
The Old Vic, The Cut, London SE1 8NB
Check our previews for more theatre in and around the South Bank and Bankside.
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