Dylan's New Drama

A London musical imagines his songs set in his hometown during the Great Depression – and it works

- David Browne

‘I’D ALWAYS LIKED THE STAGE AND even more so, the theater,” Bob Dylan wrote in his memoir, Chronicles. “It seemed like the most supreme craft of all craft.” But for nearly five decades, the idea of a Dylan musical has been as elusive as the songwriter himself. In the late Sixties, poet and playwright Archibald Mac Leish tried to recruit Dylan to write songs for a theatrical show called Scratch (“After hearing a few lines from the script, I didn’t see how our destinies could be intermixed,” wrote Dylan). In 2006, choreographer Twyla Tharp directed The Times They Are A-Changin’. Set at a traveling circus, it closed after three weeks.