Drawing From Bob Dylan's Songbook, Learning Lessons in Mortality
'I don't know if you've ever panicked ,' Almond writes in his new book, 'Slow Train Coming: Bob Dylan's 'Girl From the North Country' and Broadway's Rebirth.'
An oral history, it chronicles the journey of Conor McPherson's 'Girl From the North Country' from the Public Theater in 2018 to Broadway in 2020, then through the theater's traumatic pandemic shutdown to a restart in 2021 on a much more fragile Broadway. Rigorously footnoted, informed by interviews with fellow company members as well as industry figures, the book is shaped by Almond's own memories as a cast member making his Broadway debut.
Its publication dovetails with Audible's audio release of Almond's surreal, nearly solo musical 'I'm Almost There,' about one man's fear-filled, distraction-strewn path to love. Inspired by 'The Odyssey,' it had a limited run at the Minetta Lane Theater in Manhattan last fall, directed by David Cromer.
Earlier this month, Almond, 48, spoke by phone from his house on an island in Maine. These are edited excerpts from that conversation. Image Almond, center, in the musical 'Girl From the North Country' at the Belasco Theater in Manhattan in 2020. Credit... Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
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