Sydney Festival has announced the first show in its 2022 program under new Director Olivia Ansell. The musical Girl from the North Country, written and directed by Irish dramatist Conor McPherson, with songs by Bob Dylan, will open at the newly refurbished Theatre Royal in January. The cast will include Lisa McCune, Zahra Newman, Terence Crawford, Peter Carroll and Helen Dallimore.

Girl from the North Country premiered at The Old Vic in London in 2017 and has since had sell-out seasons at New York’s Public Theatre, in the West End, in Toronto and on Broadway.

The musical was suggested to McPherson (The Weir, The Seafarer) by Dylan’s team and features around 20 songs from across his career, including Slow Train, I Want You, You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere and Like a Rolling Stone.

Girl from the North Country in London’s Noël Coward Theatre, 2018. Photo © Tristram Kenton

Set in Dylan’s home town of Duluth, Minnesota, in 1934, during the Depression, the plot spins around a community living on a knife-edge in a local guesthouse. The owner, Nick, is facing foreclosure on the...