The Stage, a weekly British newspaper and website covering the entertainment industry, has compiled reviews of the new Bob Dylan-inspired play set in 1930’s Duluth. Girl from the North Country, written and directed by Conor McPherson, opened earlier this month at the Vic Theater in London.

Critic Fergus Morgan notes the show “boasts a large, diverse cast, and 20 Dylan songs from across his career, pared down and rearranged for the stage by Simon Hale and performed by a live, onstage band.” The setting is described as “a run-down Minnesota guesthouse during the Great Depression. We’re in Duluth, Dylan’s place of birth, seven years before the singer-songwriter entered the world.”

Perfect Duluth Day reported in early May that a new musical play written and directed by Conor McPherson with music and lyrics by Bob Dylan was scheduled to open at the Vic Theater in London in July. What wasn’t known at the time is the play is set in Duluth.

Audio clips of two tracks recorded as part of a workshop for Girl from the North Country can be heard in the PDD post from May. Three reports verifying the setting of the play are listed below.

From the BBC New story “Bob Dylan: Conor McPherson on writing the musical“:

Conor McPherson has set the play in a guesthouse in Dylan’s birthplace of Duluth in Minnesota. It is called Girl from the North Country, after a track Dylan wrote in 1963.