VETERAN actor Greg Stone is a man who grew up on the songs of Bob Dylan.

I catch up with him at the end of the first week of rehearsals for “Girl From the North Country” in which he plays Mr Burke, one of the stars, along with Lisa McCune, Zahra Newman, Helen Dallimore, Peter Carroll and Terence Crawford, who act in the Bob Dylan play coming soon to the Theatre Royal, Sydney.

“It’s like an Irish play with American songs,” he says of the text by celebrated playwright Conor McPherson who, after being approached by Bob Dylan’s record company, reimagined the songs of Dylan and created a play set in 1930s Depression-era Minnesota, specifically Duluth, the city of Dylan’s birth.

The story is set in a boarding house and the songs reveal the characters’ inner life without having much to do with the action, and that had the Broadway critics grumbling at the lack of direct connection between song and character.

That doesn’t worry Stone, who says it’s not like a conventional musical at all.

“I’d call it a play with music,” he says, “and the arrangements of Dylan‘s musical pieces are not always what you’d expect… It’s quite an emotional experience, a bit like the musical ‘Come from Away’ in the way it works on you.”

Bearing in mind Dylan’s folk origins as well as the play’s setting in 1930s Minnesota, the small, live band featuring Mark Harris, Tracey Lynch and Cameron Henderson, performing under Andrew Ross, will use simple acoustic instruments of the era, an ancient drum kit, a bit of piano, a violin and a double bass.

“I like that, it’s kind of raw,” Stone says, praising the tight harmonies. 

On Stone’s advice, I head for YouTube to listen to a dozen of the numbers and, tight harmony or not, find that Dylan’s distinctive voice shines through loud and clear. This will be one for the fans. 

So, what does Bob Dylan think about it?

Well for one thing, Stone points out it was his idea. He’d been very keen about Conor McPherson’s writing and initiated a conversation about writing a play around his songs. 

“It’s a play for now, for coming out of lockdown,” Stone says. “It warms your heart and affects you in a deep way… but I don’t know how or why, because the songs don’t drive the plot along.”

The focus in the story is on the boarding house individuals but, as with the famous Dylan number “Hurricane” (which details the wrongful conviction of former middleweight boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter), the performance reflects the characters. 

Stone has been in the business for a long time. His mum and dad were Dylan acolytes and Stone saw Dylan perform in Perth in 1978 during his reggae period.

“That had a great effect on me,” he says. 

The plays features very famous songs, such as the aforementioned “Hurricane”, “Like a Rolling Stone” and “All Along The Watchtower”, but as well there’s the haunting “Duquesne Whistle”, the newest Dylan song in the show, dating from 2012, and a host of others, such as “Sign on the Window”, “Forever Young” and Stone’s personal favourite, “Every Grain of Sand”, the lyrics of which prove how misguided those snooty intellectuals were who complained that Dylan wasn’t a real poet. 

Stone thinks Dylan may have written 1000 songs but he can’t prove it. Like me, he loves the angry songs, such as “Masters of War” and “Maggie’s Farm”, but believes they don’t belong in this gentle narrative. Mind you, the lyrics “Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth/ You’re an idiot, babe” do crop up. 

Ensemble member Chemon Theys is not quite so reverential as Stone. She comes from a completely different generation, so that before she was cast in “Girl From the North Country,” her idea of the ’60s consisted of The Temptations, The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix.

Then she realised that Dylan came from the same area and says: “I guess the show brought out my appreciation”. 

Equally at home in musical and straight theatre, the NIDA-trained Theys is a fine singer who performs a lot of the tight harmonies and says: “I love the fact that this is a play with music, you don’t need all the glitz… it’s like a straight play, it’s so beautiful”.

Theys admits to enjoying a bit of folk music, which made it easier to come around to Dylan. She’s been researching his discography and discovered, to her amazement, that Adele had done a cover of Dylan’s “Make You Feel My Love”, which is in the show.

Her favourites? “There’s A Slow Train Coming” –  “a very powerful piece” – “Like a Rolling Stone” at the end of act one and a magnificent final “piece de resistance” that she will not name – “people will just have to wait and see”.

“Girl From the North Country”, Theatre Royal, part of 2022 Sydney Festival, from January 5, book at theatreroyalsydney.com