You can practically see the tumbleweeds blowing through the hearts of the characters in “Girl From the North Country.” This achingly beautiful musical weds the songs of Bob Dylan to a book, by Conor McPherson, that explores the unsettled destinies of the denizens of a boarding house in Duluth, Minn., during the Great Depression.
What unites the characters, diverse though they are, is a sense of tenuousness, the feeling that the earth will never feel firm beneath their feet, that they will forever be on a search for a resting place. In short that they will remain adrift, “without a home, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone,” to borrow a famous Dylan lyric that is emblematic of the musical’s central theme, the loneliness that follows the characters like an unshakable shadow.
