Arts

‘Girl From the North Country’ to close on Broadway, hoping to return.

“Girl From the North Country,” a heart-tugging musical that uses the songs of Bob Dylan to consider the Depression-era plight of a group of down-on-their-luck Midwesterners in the Minnesota town where Dylan was born, will end its Broadway run on Jan. 23, but said it would try to reopen later this spring.

The show is the seventh on Broadway to announce a temporary or permanent closing date since early December, when the Omicron variant sent coronavirus cases soaring in New York.

“Girl From the North Country,” with a book by the Irish playwright Conor McPherson, has had a tough run on Broadway: It opened at the Belasco Theater on March 5, 2020, just a week before the coronavirus pandemic forced all theaters to close. And then it was deemed ineligible to compete for that season’s Tony Awards, because too few voters had managed to see it before the industry shut down (it is eligible to compete this season).

The musical resumed performances Oct. 13, 2021, but, with its dark tone and small scale, never really found its footing, despite strong prepandemic reviews in outlets including The New York Times, in which the critic Ben Brantley called the show “profoundly beautiful.”

The musical, which McPherson also directed, began its life in 2017 at the Old Vic in London, and then had an Off Broadway run in 2018 at the Public Theater before transferring to Broadway. It also had a run in Toronto, and has a current production in Australia.

The lead producers are Tristan Baker and Charlie Parsons, who operate a London-based production company called Runaway Entertainment. The show was capitalized for up to $9 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission; that money has not been recouped.

The producers said they hope to reopen in a different, unspecified, Broadway theater. “The production is in advanced conversations with the Shubert Organization to open again in the spring,” they said in a statement.

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