Girl from the North Country opens Arden Theatre Company’s 2026/27 season September 24, running through October 25, and it asks its cast to do something most musicals never attempt: play their own orchestra live onstage while acting the roles.

Girl from the North Country’s Cast Doubles as the Orchestra

All 13 members of the Girl from the North Country’s cast handle the music themselves, moving between more than 25 instruments including piano, guitar, banjo, mandolin, and harmonica, often mid-scene. It’s a genuine production feat rather than a gimmick, one that turns every musical number into something the actors are visibly building in real time rather than performing to a hidden pit band.

Learning that many instruments well enough to perform them live, on top of a full acting role, is a genuinely different kind of demand than a traditional musical places on its cast.

The cast brings real Philadelphia theater pedigree. Scott Greer, a 30-year veteran of the city’s stages, has won six Barrymore Awards, including the F. Otto Haas Award for Emerging Theatre Artist, and was named Philadelphia Magazine’s Best Theatre Talent. Sarah Gliko, a four-time Barrymore winner and founding member of the Wilma Theater’s Tony Award-winning Hothouse Resident Acting Company, joins Matteo Scammell, himself a Barrymore winner for Actor in a Lead Role.

Greg Wood’s own Broadway credits include Our Town and Othello at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, alongside film and television work spanning The Sixth Sense, The Blacklist, and Chicago Fire.

^{Clockwise from top left: Scott Greer, Sarah Gliko, Matteo Scammell, Greg Wood, Eric Hissom and Maggie Lakis.}

Eric Hissom toured nationally in The Thirty-Nine Steps and works as a writer and director when he’s not onstage, while Maggie Lakis has carried principal roles through national tours of Mrs. Doubtfire, Something Rotten, and Avenue Q. Charlie DelMarcelle rounds out the group, teaching at West Chester University alongside his own long list of regional credits.

Girl from the North Country Reimagines Dylan’s Songbook

The plot of Girl from the North Country unfolds in a run-down boarding house in Depression-era Duluth, Minnesota, where strangers’ lives intersect under real financial and emotional strain. Rather than driving the plot forward the way songs usually do in a musical, Bob Dylan’s catalog, including “Forever Young,” “Hurricane,” and “Like a Rolling Stone,” functions as a window into what the characters can’t say out loud.

That distinction matters more than it might sound like on paper; a song that drives plot tells you what happens next, while a song that reveals interior life tells you why any of it matters at all.

That’s a genuinely different use of a songbook than most jukebox musicals attempt, treating each number as interior monologue rather than narrative engine. Director Terrence J. Nolen and Music Director Ryan Touhey lead the production, following a similar instinct playing out elsewhere in Philadelphia theater this season: using established source material as a lens rather than a script to follow literally. That combination, actor-musicians and a full run through October 25, is what Arden Theatre Company is opening its season on.

Dylan wrote most of these songs as private, unstageable things, closer to confession than performance. Handing them to 13 actor-musicians who have to both embody a character and physically produce the music themselves is a real test of whether that kind of songwriting can survive being shared out loud, night after night, in front of an audience.

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Allan Lane

Philadelphia born and bred, Allan Lane is the Publisher and Editor in Chief of digital magazines. He launched his first publication, SportBikes Inc Magazine in 2010, followed by dosage MAGAZINE in 2019. Recently, Allan launched his third online publication, Club For Man. As a journalist, Allan covers fashion, lifestyle, culture, art, and motorcycles.

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