Rachel Johnson’s Golden Oldies

When my two adorable nieces were smaller, it was dangerous to go anywhere with them in their family VW Tiguan. As soon they’d been bundled and buckled into the brace of car seats in the back, the tinies would screaming without cease.

‘Money, money, money, must be funny,’ they would shriek contrapuntally until Baba (my bro Leo) pressed play on the only permitted CD that resided in the drive for at least three years (though it felt much longer).

The girls refused to be in the car unless their favourite songs were played on a loop. The thing that really puzzled me was not their addiction to Abba (we’ve all been through an Abba phase). It was the fact that the chosen CD was not Abba. It was the soundtrack to the Mamma Mia! movie, the one where Pierce Brosnan sings like a strangled walrus, and the golden oldies are sung by actors… and yet it works. On girls under seven, anyway.

And, in the end, me. After so much exposure, I ended up seeing the film five times and even went to the stage version twice. Now I would choose the 2008 Mamma Mia! soundtrack over anything sung by Agnetha and Anni-frid. And I can’t wait for the sequel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, released in July.

All this is by way of preamble to the Bob Dylan vehicle Girl from the North Country. I blagged a pair of tickets to feed my addiction, on the assumption this would be a similar ‘jukebox play’ using the greatest hits to bring to life the Nobel laureate’s musical ‘journey’. In my mind, it would showcase with song how Robert Zimmerman left Duluth, Minnesota, for New York like a rolling stone; and, as the times they were a-changin’, he became Bob Dylan, and in the city he met a woman who cried just like a little girl when he left her lying on the bed ( Lay Lady Lay, of course) possibly for a girl from the north country.

I had the whole plot down. I was really looking forward to it, and took my oldest son to catch Conor Mcpherson’s hit before its triumphant run in the West End timed out and before a possible move to Broadway. The play opens in a poor boarding house peopled by assorted waifs and strays. A narrator comes on stage and announces we are in Duluth, Minnesota. Bingo!

I whisper confidently, ‘You see, Ludo? This is about the early life of Bob Dylan.’ Then, to my confusion, the narrator says it’s 1934. Even I can work out that this is not a bio-play after all (Dylan was born in 1941).

Not only is the play not about Bob, it only has about three songs everyone knows, and doesn’t even major on Dylan’s early protest songs inspired by Woody Guthrie. Instead the playwright picks from across the piece. He listened to about forty Dylan albums before he made his selection from the back catalogue. And you know what? None of that matters. There’s no plot to speak of but, boy, the actors can sing. Astonishing. I am resisting the temptation to order the CD as I worry that if I do, I will prefer it (see Mamma Mia!, above) and never feel the urge to listen to the real Bob ever again.