Two Philadelphia theaters are each staging the first regional production in the country of a show that has played Broadway, and both runs are happening at the very same time this October. Arden Theatre Company is presenting Girl From the North Country, the Bob Dylan jukebox musical, through October 25, while Philadelphia Theatre Company opens Liberation, the Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Bess Wohl, at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre from October 9 through October 25.
Landing either show this quickly is no small feat for a regional house, and according to WHYY, both theaters got there through personal industry connections. Arden co-founder and producing artistic director Terrence J. Nolen said the Arden has relationships with agents and licensing companies, while Philadelphia Theatre Company co-artistic director Taibi Magar worked her industry connections to secure Liberation, sharing an agency with playwright Bess Wohl herself. Magar told the outlet she wanted the play immediately in the theater after seeing it in New York last year.
A Bob Dylan Musical Reimagined With Actors Playing Their Own Instruments
Girl From the North Country is set in a boarding house in Duluth, Minnesota, during the Great Depression, weaving Dylan songs like Forever Young and Like a Rolling Stone into the intersecting lives of the residents, per the same WHYY report. The show debuted at London's Old Vic Theatre in 2017, moved off-Broadway in New York in 2018, and opened on Broadway in March 2020 — only to close a week later because of the COVID-19 shutdown. It reopened for three months a year and a half afterward, closed again in January 2022, returned for a limited engagement later that year, and then toured internationally for more than two years, stopping in Philadelphia in 2024.
Arden's staging departs sharply from those earlier versions. According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, the production features a 13-member cast performing 35 instruments live on stage, rather than relying on the separate pit orchestra used in the 2020 Broadway run and national tour. The Inquirer reports that Nolen modeled the actor-musician approach on the Arden's successful 2018 staging of the folk-rock musical Once, and he directed both that earlier production and this one in Old City.
Notably, the musical has no Dylan character in it at all — Bob Dylan agreed to let Irish writer and director Conor McPherson develop his songs into the show but was not part of creating it, per WHYY. Dylan reportedly first saw Girl From the North Country on Broadway with a general audience and said the play made him cry at the end. Arden received the final authorized script of music just a week before rehearsals began, following what WHYY describes as seven years of production changes.
Liberation Brings the Feminist Movement to the Stage
Across town, Liberation is set mainly in a basement gym in Ohio in the 1970s, where women meet weekly to discuss women's rights, with the story jumping between that decade and the present. WHYY reports the play is loosely based on Wohl's own mother, and American Theatre reports Wohl built it as a memory play drawing on interviews with 1970s activists and exploring the movement’s victories and ongoing progress. Philadelphia Theatre Company's production marks the first regional staging of the play in the country following its Broadway run at the James Earl Jones Theatre, according to BroadwayWorld, and it serves as the opening production of the company's 52nd season.
Gayle Smith, a retired attorney who saw Liberation in New York, told WHYY the play reflects her own experience as a young lawyer in the 1970s. Smith is serving as an honorary producer of the Philadelphia run and urged Magar to direct it as soon as possible. Gloria Steinem died at age 92. WHYY described her as a central figure of the movement depicted in the play.
Phone-Free Shows and a Partnership With a Local Women's Rights Group
Philadelphia Theatre Company will display artifacts about women's rights in Philadelphia throughout Liberation's run, and the company has partnered with Women's Way, a local nonprofit focused on women's equity that is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Per Women's Way, the organization is co-hosting a reception and dedicated performance of the play on October 9.
Every performance of Liberation will also be phone-free: BroadwayWorld reports that patrons must lock mobile devices in Yondr pouches for the entire run, due in part to scenes featuring full nudity. Devices stay with patrons but cannot be unlocked until after the show ends. Liberation's run joins a broader 2026-27 season at the company that also includes the regional premiere of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Pulitzer-winning play Purpose and a solo adaptation of The Glass Menagerie starring BD Wong, according to TheaterMania, with the season co-led by artistic director Magar.
Arden Theatre has its own recent track record of bringing lively stagecraft to Old City audiences, having hosted a former state treasurer's solo Fringe show in recent months. With Girl From the North Country and Liberation both running through October 25, Philadelphia theatergoers have a rare chance to catch two of the most decorated recent works in American theater without leaving the city.
