Photo by Matthew Murphy
His graying curls shrouded in a hoodie, the Minnesotan slipped into the darkness of a Greenwich Village playhouse, watching from a rear seat as an audience fell under the spell of his music. But when the crowd leapt to its feet at show’s end, the ghostlike figure was gone, back to the New York streets where he literally made his name—where Duluth-born, Hibbing-raised Bobby Zimmerman became Bob Dylan, the ever-elusive “voice of his generation.”
“He didn’t want anyone to know he was there,” says Irish playwright and director Conor McPherson, who drew upon 60 years of Dylan songs to create “Girl From the North Country,” the Tony-winning musical that will launch its long-delayed U.S. tour in Minneapolis in October.
McPherson didn’t learn about Dylan’s undercover visit until a couple years later, when Dylan praised the show in an interview with the New York Times: “I saw it as an anonymous spectator,” the Nobel laureate recalled. “I just let it happen. The play had me crying at the end.”
Photo by Emilio Madrid
“It was amazing that he was moved by it,” McPherson relates via Zoom from his Dublin home. “It was a little bit like—well, even if everybody else in the world hated the show, to get his imprimatur was ‘job done.’”
Far from hating the show, audiences and critics have showered plaudits on “Girl From the North Country” since its 2017 premiere in London. It arrived on Broadway just before COVID-19 shuttered stages nationwide but returned to the stage in 2021 and again last year.
Will Dylan be in Minneapolis when the musical runs Oct. 8-14 at the Orpheum Theatre—the downtown landmark he once owned? Unlikely, given his relentless touring schedule. But it was Dylan who helped rescue the Orpheum from the wrecking ball in 1979, sparking the rebirth of Hennepin Avenue’s theater district.
“Without Bob’s involvement, the downtown theater scene would be quite different than it is now,” according to legendary Twin Cities promoter Fred Krohn.
Krohn had helped market Dylan’s bewildering 1978 movie “Renaldo and Clara”—a hard sell, to say the least. His ambition, though, was to bring the smash musical “A Chorus Line” to town, a deal contingent on the Orpheum getting a much-needed makeover. So Krohn persuaded Dylan to purchase the timeworn theater as an investment.
In the decade before Dylan sold the Orpheum to the city of Minneapolis (for a modest profit), his kids became regular theater rats, answering the phones and hanging out backstage. But the singer was mainly an absentee landlord.
“We were trying desperately to find a show he would come to,” Krohn says. “He came to Tom Waits, but the one I thought was kind of clever was Andraé Crouch, probably the finest gospel show touring at that point. Bob was in his Christian period then, so he was very excited. He said, ‘I want to see what kind of audience is coming to Andraé Crouch.’”
That night, Dylan stationed himself in the ticket booth as the crowd streamed in. “He was kind of hiding out,” Krohn says. “Then he cracked open the box office door. All of a sudden he said, ‘I’m going to open the door and see if anybody recognizes me.’ Once the word got out, it was kind of like Prince time—everyone was crowding around. I think he really wanted to be recognized. He just didn’t want to let people know that he wanted to be recognized.”
Photo by Matthew Murphy
Although McPherson has been labeled “the finest playwright of his generation,” he had never created a musical until Dylan’s manager asked him to give it a try.
“Bob’s never going to do anything the straightforward way,” McPherson noted in a brogue softened by years of working on stages across the English-speaking world. “It’s always going to be a crooked, crooked journey.”
Minnesota had made an indelible impression on the playwright when the Guthrie Theater staged his adaptation of “The Birds” a decade ago. “People were warm, friendly, curious,” he says. “And the winter. I had never experienced cold quite like that, cold that can get into your bones.”
Walking along the Dublin seacoast as he pondered Dylan, an image flashed in his mind—a Duluth boardinghouse in the depths of the Great Depression. That became the setting for “North Country,” a place where lives converge and songs emerge, expressing the characters’ internal dramas.
“When I was first asked, ‘Hey, what would you think about using Bob Dylan’s music in a show?’ I just said, ‘Well, that’s a terrible idea,’” McPherson recalls. “Fans of musical theater know what they want, and it’s not Bob Dylan songs. And Bob Dylan’s fans are not looking for musical theater, probably.
“The only way that I could see it working was to have a very instinctive response to Bob’s songs … and just allow them to be what they are, because everyone in the audience is going to see a different little movie in their head.”
Photo by Matthew Murphy
So don’t expect a chorus singing “Like a Rolling Stone,” jazz hands in the air. This show aims for intimate, visceral moments.
McPherson’s own musical tastes took shape as a preteen when he saw the Beatles’ movies on TV. “I got a guitar and then one of those little songbooks that has chords in them. I remember the first one in it was ‘Mr. Tambourine Man.’ The lyrics were just so crazy. So that was my introduction to Bob Dylan.
“I was in a few bands when I was in my teens. Post-post-punk. One of the bands we really loved was [St. Paul’s] Hüsker Dü. The idea that something could be rocky but melodic. Another great Minnesota band I’ve always loved are the Jayhawks. Amazing songwriting craft.”
McPherson will return to Minneapolis this fall when “North Country” begins rehearsals. While he actually hasn’t visited Dylan’s birthplace, he says, “I did meet people from Duluth at the opening night. That was frightening, but they’ve been really complimentary.”
He hasn’t met Dylan either but saw him perform in Dublin last November. “He’s still at the peak of his powers. You know you’re in the presence of something very, very, very rare.
“When I started listening to his music with a view to doing the show, I hadn’t realized the depth of that born-again-Christian period he had, though he’s been singing about this stuff all along—you know, ‘God said to Abraham, kill me a son.’ It’s a spiritual journey he’s been on, and he sounds much more at peace now.”
“Girl From the North Country,” Orpheum Theatre, Oct. 8-14 (and for even more fall theater in the Twin Cities, click here)
