Jeremy Webb in the Girl from the North Country North American tour (Photo by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade)

Heaven’s door

Queer actor Jeremy Webb explores spiritual role in Girl from the North Country

RICH LOPEZ | Staff writer
rich@dallasvoice.com

The North Country has come to Dallas, and Jeremy Webb has come along with it. The actor stars in Girl from the North Country, now playing at Music Hall at Fair Park. The musical, based on songs by Bob Dylan, opened last Tuesday, April 9, as part of the Broadway Dallas season and runs through April 21.

Webb has been in the show since the end of August playing Reverend Marlowe, and the actor says it has allowed him to explore his own spirituality. Having said that, he does add that the character is also one of the show’s antagonists.

“On the surface, he’s really a Bible salesman. He’s legitimately spiritual, but his faith journey is in conflict with his need to survive,” Webb said. “His conviction is just as deep as his desperation for the next dollar or meal.”

Girl from the North Country takes place in a boarding house in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. Characters stop to spend the evening with the family that runs the house, and Marlowe, in Webb’s words, blows into the house on that fateful evening laced with blackmail, theft and violence.

Playing a reverend who may not be the nicest isn’t the challenge for Webb — it’s defending his character that takes the effort.

“Some things I do are indefensible. But he’s created his reasons for that, and I have to stand by it. You have to think about Marlowe as being wholly human and thus, flawed. Too often we think in absolute terms, but what I’m learning with him is that people can hold space for two things at the same time even if they are diametrically opposed,” he said.

Aidan Wharton, David Benoit, Jennifer Blood and Jeremy Webb in the Girl from the North Country North American tour tour (Photo by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade)

This role has opened Webb’s eyes to his own faith system.

“I am a spiritual person, and I’ve enjoyed this inner exploration — more than I normally would,” he said. “While [Marlowe] is perceived to be the bad guy, it’s not useful for me to think about [the character] that way. I have to like the guy and be the guy. So in some ways, I’m his defense. I have to defend my character to the audience every night to make him real to the audience.”

That exploration is what the out actor loves about acting. He not only taps into the character’s depths, but, Webb mentioned, for that amount of time he spends as the character, he gets to be an expert.

Does Marlowe ever intersect with Webb personally — most notably Webb’s queer identity? “To me, every character is everything until they aren’t,” Webb said. “James does not have a love interest, so there’s no romance to indicate anything. But I have been thinking about what life was like for gay people in the 1930s, and the stakes are higher.

“I’m not playing him as a gay man, but because I’m playing him, he does have a certain queerness in him,” he added. “Really though, I’m basing it all on survival.”

If he can’t bind to a distinct queerness in his character, Webb said, he has bonded with his cast and crew.

“Oh, this is a very queer company. We have this lovely community of queerness in this touring cast,” he said. “That’s been something really fun for us. We have our Drag Race nights, and we’ll go out to explore.”

That keeps him grounded while on the road for so long.

If there’s one thing that’s tough — beyond doing eight shows a week — it’s being away from home.

Webb is based in New York City and North Country is his first tour of this magnitude (14 months). He describes it as exhilarating, uplifting and exhausting. But there are sacrifices that come with his art.

“I miss my husband and our life together. It can be a real challenge to be inspired when I start going down that road,” Webb said.

Webb met his husband doing Camelot, and they have been married for 28 years. To combat any woes Webb may have on the road, the couple has come up with a failsafe: “We have a three-week rule that wherever I am or the other is, we make it a point to travel there to be together,” he said.

With his Drag Race nights with his show’s queer family or those weeks he gets to see his husband, Webb said that he’s more than able to stay rooted on the road.

For tickets, visit BroadwayDallas.org.