and crew of Girl in particular. Finally, the third tells the story of actor Todd Almond from childhood to his appearance in Girl. The first two stories are far more interesting than the third.

Girl from the North Country began when Bob Dylan’s manager, Jeff Rosen, approached producer Tristan Baker about using some of Dylan’s enormous catalog in a musical. Ten years earlier, another Dylan musical, Twyla Tharp’s The Times They Are a-Changin' was a critical and commercial flop. Rosen thought it might be time for another attempt. Eventually, the parties agreed on an unusual format for “Girl.” Noted Irish playwright Conor McPherson wrote a script about the residents of a boarding house in Duluth, MN (Dylan’s birthplace) in 1934, during the heart of the Great Depression. The action would stop at various times in the play, and the characters would begin singing and dancing. The lead singer would stand in front of an old-time upright microphone, while other cast members played instruments from that era for accompaniment. A few songs were popular Dylan tunes, including the title song (which has nothing to do with the play’s story), “Like a Rolling Stone,” and “Forever Young.” However, most of the show’s tunes were relatively unknown to non-Dylan followers. Many came from Dylan’s gospel albums. Even the popular Dylan songs had new orchestrations, so casual listeners wouldn’t realize they were listening to Dylan music for a while.

The show opened in London in 2017, where actresses Shirley Henderson and Sheila Atim won Olivier Awards (the British equivalent of the Tony). Girl then opened off-Broadway in 2018 to large audiences and critical acclaim. Unfortunately, because of the mechanics of Broadway theatrical productions (one show can’t open until another closes), it didn’t open on Broadway until March 2020. And closed one week later. It reopened in the fall of 2021, but audiences didn’t return. The show closed a second time in January 2022. (It reopened briefly later that spring for a limited run and has enjoyed considerable success on a national tour.)

Todd Almond conducted extensive interviews with his fellow cast members and the people behind the scenes involved in the American production. His personal involvement with the show didn’t begin until auditions for the off-Broadway production. However, Almond also conducted similar interviews with the London cast and crew. Slow Train Coming largely takes the form of interview excerpts, formatted to resemble a play script:

MARE WINNINGHAM: (a paragraph of Winningham’s interview).

In between the interview excerpts, Almond tells his story in the first person. At times, the transitions from the recorded interview to Almond’s first-person recollections and back aren’t clear.

Much of the material in Slow Train Coming is fascinating, especially for those somewhat unfamiliar with the workings of “the theater.” (I learned the exact difference between Broadway and off-Broadway). Almond and his interviewees describe how the table reads work and the schedule for the various rehearsals. While many of the details in Slow Train Coming universally apply to large-scale theatrical productions, some are peculiar to Girl from the North Country. One highlight was the night Bob Dylan attended a performance of the off-Broadway show, sitting in the back of the theater, trying to remain incognito. (Ironically, Dylan had a concert in New York the next night, and some of the cast members got the chance to go backstage at that performance.)

As Girl from the North Country went through a month of rehearsals and previews before its Broadway debut, COVID was also making its debut in the United States. The author recounts the cast’s reaction to the worsening epidemic, and the precautions taken to keep the cast healthy. (One kissing moment in the play was changed, so the couple merely hugged each other.) When some cast members fell ill, ensemble members stepped into their roles; others roughed it out. And when the author had 18 months to himself during the shutdown, he described how he kept active as he waited out a hoped-for reopening.

Author Todd Almond is a playwright and songwriter, besides being an actor. At various times in the book, he describes his own life and career. Frankly, most of this is fluff and filler. (He installed building windows to make ends meet between rare acting jobs in his youth.) I wish he started the personal material with his involvement with Girl instead. Almond also does a lot of rambling philosophizing that interrupts the flow of the text several times. I’d much rather read about the other cast members’ experiences than the author’s views on life, such as the time he proclaims “The entire journey of Girl from the North Country with its extreme ups and downs feels fated to me. Conor [McPherson] offering up his idea for the show through a note passed backstage (emphasis in original) is the blessed/cursed moment that set the whole thing in motion.” A little of that goes a long way, and, unfortunately, Almond gives us a lot more than a little.

I had other problems with Slow Train Running as well. Almond provides snippets about the plot and various songs scattered throughout the book. However, when I finished the book, I still didn’t know the play’s overall storyline well. I had to consult Wikipedia for that. A one-page synopsis towards the front of the book would have been very helpful. Similarly, the author assumes readers are familiar with the various actors whose names he drops. Some names like Mare Winningham and Shirley Henderson are reasonably well known. However, others are not, outside the Broadway theater community. Brief bios of the interviewees would have helped.

The book’s organization is also haphazard, jumping back and forth in time with no real reason. The first chapter segues from a discussion of Almond’s window installation days to his playing the guitar in London, to his role in the show (his character has two lines of dialogue and one show-stopping song) to his conducting research for the book to a reading in 2018 before finally settling in on the history of the production. This rambling introduction nearly lost me before the book really got started.

The only way for readers of Slow Train Coming to get a real feel for Girl from the North Country is to see a production. Barring that, I strongly recommend watching the various clips that are available on YouTube. Almond couldn’t include such clips or inserts in a printed book. However, he had access to many photographs of the cast and crew, including production stills. For some reason, the book only contains 12 pictures, only one of which is a photo of a scene in the production. This is an unfortunate oversight.

Despite the book’s flaws, I’m giving a mild recommendation to Slow Train Coming. I’m much more enthusiastic about Girl from the North Country, which I’d never heard of before reading this book but I’ve now added to my future must-see list. The book provides some great insight into the creation of a most unusual project and an education into the ways of the theater. Unfortunately, it also suffers from poor organization and too many distracting observations by the author that were boring and unnecessary. Bob Dylan and Girl from the North Country do pretty well without those distractions.

NOTE: The publisher graciously provided me with a copy of this book through NetGalley. However, the decision to review the book and the contents of this review are entirely my own.