Girl from the North Country Closes Out Its Arden Run as Liberation Gives Feminism Center Stage
Two of Philadelphia’s most decorated theaters are offering the city a study in American storytelling this month. Girl from the North Country enters its final week at the Arden Theatre Company, closing Oct. 25, while Philadelphia Theatre Company presents the Philadelphia premiere of Liberation, running Oct. 9 through Oct. 25.
The pairing matters because both productions ask what ordinary people inherited from hard times. The Dylan-scored musical sets Depression-era longing to some of the most famous songs in American music, while Liberation, Bess Wohl’s Tony Award-winning Best Play of 2026 and winner of the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, traces the women’s liberation movement through one mother’s hidden past.
Girl from the North Country unfolds inside a run-down boarding house in Duluth, Minnesota, where strangers cross paths during the Great Depression. Written by Conor McPherson and directed by Terrence J. Nolen, the production brings together 13 actor-musicians who also serve as the orchestra, playing piano, guitar, banjo, mandolin, and harmonica live on stage, according to BroadwayWorld.
The cast includes Eric Hissom as the beleaguered patriarch Nick, Sarah Gliko as his wife, and Candace Thomas as Mrs. Neilson, according to Broad Street Review. Single tickets start at $32 at the F. Otto Haas Stage on North 2nd Street in Old City.
Liberation arrives at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre on Broad Street weeks after the death of Gloria Steinem, who died Sept. 2 at 92 after six decades as the most visible symbol of the U.S. women’s movement, according to obituaries. The timing gives the production the weight of an elegy as well as a celebration.
Moving between the early 1970s and the present, the play follows Lizzie as she reconstructs her late mother’s life as a member of a consciousness-raising group in small-town Ohio. Directed by PTC Co-Artistic Director Taibi Magar, it is the first production in the country following the play’s Broadway run at Roundabout Theatre Company.
“We are still asking today” the questions the women raise about work, motherhood, identity, and freedom, Magar said in a statement, and the play asks what one generation changed, what it left unfinished, and what the next inherited.
The limited 18-performance engagement has an opening night Oct. 14. Audiences should note the age recommendation of 16 and older and the content advisory for strong language, mature themes, and nudity, according to Stage Magazine.