Girl from the North Country – The Old Vic

Katie Brayben and Justina Kehinde in Girl from the North Country at The Old Vic, London. Picture: Manuel Harlan

Girl from the North Country continues at The Old Vic Theatre, London until 23 August 2025.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

For all the snobbiness around Mamma Mia!, it sure did nail what a jukebox musical should be. ABBA’s music was always about fun and wide appeal as much as it was about love and relationships, and therefore so was the musical theatre piece built to show off their songs. Bob Dylan did not have any creative involvement in Conor McPherson’s Girl from the North Country, but it is nevertheless a fitting vehicle for the man’s music. It takes in a wide swathe of the human experience, with many characters, allusions to great literature, and a background darkness against which all joy shines thrice as bright.

Set in depression-era 1930s America, Girl from the North Country explores poverty, desperation, lust, race and many more perennial yet hidden undercurrents of the American Dream. The show was previously produced at The Old Vic in 2017 and it garnered rave reviews. Now it is back – with many of the same cast and crew – for a limited run for anyone who missed it the first time. Given the recent success of Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, it could even see a larger and younger audience this time around.

Fans of Dylan will find a lot to enjoy here. Musical director Alan Berry’s four-piece band is supplemented by a handful of actor-musicians at the front of stage piano and drum set. With smatterings of tasteful upright bass, slide guitar, fiddle and mandolin, the arrangements are very reminiscent of a Dylan concert, which is to say: sometimes very far removed from the original recordings.

Though some arrangements early in Act I are a little samey – of that ‘slowed down to become emotional ballads for actors to act to’ type – more variety shows up as the play continues. ‘I Want You’ works surprisingly well as a traditional musical theatre love duet, ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ is a ferocious assertion of self for a disregarded figure, and ‘Forever Young’ is an utterly heart-breaking conclusion for this quite tragic piece.

A tangible energy permeates the room when the arrangements stick close to the original recordings and the audience immediately recognise a favourite, as is the case with ‘Hurricane’, ‘Duquesne Whistle’ or ‘You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere’. Even songs that don’t get full outings like ‘Make You Feel My Love’, ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’ or ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ are interpolated into other numbers or referenced in the text. Dylanologists love to pour over the details, and Girl from the North Country certainly won’t disappoint in that respect.

More than any other artist’s oeuvre, Dylan’s songs could never be made into a straightforward narrative musical. His lyrics are rarely vague enough to be simply transposed onto a new situation. If there is a rare straightforward line declaring love, for instance, the next line will invariably reference an obscure bit of theology or Moby Dick. Consequently, this show is more of a play with songs attached for atmosphere and mood. Even the book itself is something of a buffet of various characters and themes.

Girl from the North Country’s many plots are set in a 1930s Great Depression-era guesthouse in Duluth, Minnesota. Proprietor Nick Laine (Colin Connor) brings to mind Fiddler on the Roof’s Tevye: trying to do what he thinks is best for his family in difficult circumstances with a degree of humour until he is pushed too far. Connor’s carefully calibrated characterisation is charismatic despite Nick’s undercurrent of desperate, violent rage. Around him roll tides of money troubles, racism, teenage pregnancy, murder, mental illness, drug addiction, alcoholism, adultery and much more besides.

Justina Kehinde is outstanding as the Laines’ adopted daughter Marianne, and she shares undeniable chemistry with the honey-voiced and room-commanding Sifiso Mazibuko as boxer Joe Scott. Maria Omakinwa is alternately hilarious and tragic as Nick’s mistress Mrs Neilsen, and Eugene McCoy is perfectly slimy as conman ‘Reverend’ Marlowe. But the clear audience favourite role on the evening I attended was the always-phenomenal Katie Brayben as Elizabeth, the Laine family matriarch whose dementia allows her to be a cutting voice of truth in a world where so many are too preoccupied with their own worries and social standing to speak candidly.

So, there are a lot of plots and a lot of characters. The varied but intense subject matter is very Dylan, and though we don’t get to spend as much time with any of the many plot threads as we might like, the overall effect is powerful. Dylan’s music is another thread altogether: though it reinforces mood and atmosphere, the lyrics are almost always detached from the action. McPherson (director as well as writer) is painting with snapshots. Each flicker of emotion ignited by the glorious blaze on that Old Vic stage is a part of a greater whole.

Taken at face value, this is a pretty depressing show, yet much of the audience left buoyant. We had enjoyed such an all-encompassing yet so truthful and so specific portrait of the human experience, we couldn’t help but feel uplifted. Like the view from atop a cliff: the brush with our mortality precludes if from being a wholly positive experience, yet it can nevertheless be sublime.

Girl from the North Country isn’t a show for everyone, of course. It was a magical experience for me personally, but there were a minority of vocal dissenters among the throng heading towards Waterloo Station post-curtain. Well, none of Dylan’s numerous incarnations have been universally loved either. Perhaps we’re all just catching up with his trailblazing spirit. Some people don’t want medicine alongside their spoonful of sugar, and some do. Those willing to take the bad with the good may come to realise it has all been good all along. Give or take that 2009 Christmas album.

Ian Bowkett