Slow Train Coming: Bob Dylan’s Girl from the North Country and Broadway’s Rebirth

In his resonant debut, actor Almond traces the rise and fall of the Tony-nominated musical Girl from the North Countryagainst the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic. Starting with the show’s earliest incarnations in 2017 on London’s West End, Almond—who played one of the residents of a boardinghouse where the play takes place—captures the anticipation leading up to its March 2020 Broadway opening and shutdown days afterward; the strangeness and anxiety of a $2 billion industry reduced to email communication; and the doubts that set in as he was alienated from his fellow actors. When the show reopened (first in October 2021, and then, after the Omicron variant shuttered it the following January, in May 2022), the joys of returning to the stage mixed with logistical challenges like strict Covid testing protocols and sick actors getting replaced by understudies. At the same time, the show itself—which is set to Bob Dylan songs and takes place during the Great Depression, a “survival time” with uncanny parallels to the pandemic—made for a tough sell to traumatized theatergoers seeking pure escapism, contributing to its eventual closure. Almond delivers a textured portrait of musical theater’s relevance (“Life for everyone over the past year had been uncertain and frightening,” he recalls thinking in 2021. “Girl from the North Country was an acknowledgement of that”) that probes deeper questions about art’s power to connect and inspire. Theater lovers ought to snap this up. (Jan.)