Interview: Jeremy Webb of GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY at Saenger Theatre

This week, GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY takes the stage at the Saenger Theatre, bringing its powerful Depression-era story to New Orleans. The musical, set in 1934, focuses on the lives of struggling characters at a boarding house in Minnesota. Through the music of Bob Dylan, orchestrated into hauntingly beautiful arrangements, their stories of survival, loss, love, and redemption unfold against a backdrop of economic despair and personal hardship. One of the standout roles in the show is Reverend James Marlowe, portrayed by actor Jeremy Webb. In a recent interview with BroadwayWorld.com, Webb shared his thoughts on bringing this enigmatic character to life and the complexities of a man teetering between survival and faith.

BroadwayWorld.com: Tell us about your character from GIRL FROM NORTH COUNTRY, Reverand James Marlowe.

Webb: He’s a really interesting character. He’s definitely a quintessential character of the Depression in that he’s very down on his luck, comes to the boarding house from dubious circumstances, and is on the grift. And my interpretation of the character also has an actual relationship with God and spirituality. He’s a complex character, as many of the characters in the show are.

BWW: Reverand Marlowe is an intriguing character in GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY. How did you first approach to bringing him to life on stage?

Webb: I was invited to the dress of the original Broadway company, so my first experience with the character was watching the play as an audience member. And I was intrigued by this character. There’s so much mystery that surrounds the Reverand. Is he good? Is he bad? Is he working for his own gain, or does he have love for his fellow man? Is he religious, or is he not? And when I got the audition a few years later for the Broadway national tour, I was doing Boing Boing at the time…stylistically the complete opposite of GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY, not dramatic, not naturalistic, and I think I was inspired to go the opposite direction of the thing that I was working on at that moment every night on stage. So, I think I was trying to be as non-farcical on my first audition tape because I was doing a farce at night. Then, when I met with Connor McPherson, our brilliant writer and director, in the early days of rehearsal, he kept encouraging me to go to darker, louder, stranger, weirder places. And those directions felt really empowering for me as an actor…so what I’ve come up with is something kind of extreme and different from the work I normally do, and the great joy for me is that it’s in some ways a departure from a lot of the acting I’ve done before this in my career and that’s really thrilling as an artist.

BWW: How does Bob Dylan’s music complement the musical with it being set during the Great Depression? Since it was a very different generation when Dylan wrote his music.

Webb: You’re right. The place takes place in ’34; Dylan was not born till around 1940, and of course, he burst out into the scene in the ‘60s as part of the counterculture and kept reinventing himself up until the current day…I mean, he’s still out there doing his music, having an effect on the scene. In many ways, if you think of Dylan as the American Troubadour, you think of him as the voice of America, the voice of change, the voice of the people. I think that’s the place where he intersects with the story of GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY. It’s a folksy, bluegrass sound that has been transformed by Simon Hill, this brilliant British orchestrator, into a more choral, melodic sound so the thrum of Dylan still pulses its way through this music…I think Dylan sounds like America to me, and this is a quintessentially American story about a very low and, thus, very dramatic moment in our history.

BWW: And how does Reverand Marlowe navigate this difficult period?

Webb: Not very well. He uses anything he can possibly find to survive. So, whether that’s conning another character or stealing or violence, I mean, he resorts to a lot of extreme actions to survive. But this is, in many ways, a tale about survival and about those who don’t survive. It’s a brilliant new American musical that, in many ways, pushes the form of what a musical can be. And GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY is also a tragedy. It’s a story about people trying and failing to survive. In that sense, Reverand Marlow may be one of the strongest examples of that motif. It’s a bleak path, his arc through the show.

BWW: What do you think, ultimately, he’s looking for other than surviving to the next day?

Webb: I think acceptance, connection. All again, these things he’s quite bad at achieving because his means to an end are dead ends, but like all of us and through music particularly, he’s looking for a connection for support from his fellow man. But he’s been so failed by his environment that he is at the end of the line…The boarding house is a place where there is shelter, food, and other humans. Every night, I’m looking for that connection from another person, whether it be a hug, a handshake, or a tiny hint of love or acceptance. But as I say, it’s a tragedy.

BWW: So, it’s safe to say the Reverand has a complex moral compass.

Webb: That’s exactly right. It’s more Macbeth or Richard III than Hamlet. He’s not so virtuous. But I still argue that doesn’t mean he’s not a spiritual person. I’m prepared to play the person who can hold space for both of those things to exist at the same time, a person who is spiritual and has a relationship to God and is trying and failing at the same time that they’re trying and failing to get food, to get money, to get to the next place in life to get a leg up.

BWW: What do you hope audiences take away from GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY?

Webb: GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY is a story about the indomitability of the human spirit and the way we rise and join [together]. In many ways, it’s about how we come together through song and the community experience of sharing. These characters are faced with dire circumstances, and yet the music is so beautiful, so I hope they come away feeling they’ve been moved and touched by the story and perhaps have a moment of recollection about how, as Americans, we have gone through some things in our history.

GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY runs at the Saenger Theatre through October 20th.

To post a comment, you must register and login.