It’s Capital Pride week in Washington, D.C., and Steven Webb, a Londoner in town starring in the unabashedly queer Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen at Studio Theatre, is excited to see how the city celebrates the occasion.
“Normally I’m working over Pride,” says the actor, bubbly in a baseball cap for our afternoon Zoom call. “When I used to be in the show The Book of Mormon in the West End, during Pride weekend, all the West End shows would come together and do a big Pride warmup, where we’d all wear ridiculous outfits and walk around Soho. And that was always great. But it’s so weird because I’m literally here on my own.”
In more ways than one. Feeling Afraid puts Webb onstage solo for 90 minutes, with just a mike and a stool to portray a neurotic gay standup comedian, who’s “36 and never been in a proper relationship,” and believes he’s finally met Mr. Right, until something goes very wrong.
Imported from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival following an award-winning run, the show brilliantly reflects the sharp-witted voice of British-Brazilian-Australian writer Marcelo Dos Santos. Director Matthew Xia, who staged the Edinburgh production, also helmed Studio’s production.
“I’m here for weeks,” says Webb. “But I’ve had amazing people reach out after the show, just saying, ‘Hey, I know you’re obviously on your own here. If you’d like to join us for Pride or whatever…’”
No doubt, Webb, fearlessly funny and commanding onstage as the saucy comic, seems like he’d be great fun to hang out with. Of course, whether the audience realizes it or not, this role does entail a transformation for the actor, who’s been working on stage and screen professionally since childhood. He had his first breakout role as the titular waif in Sam Mendes’ acclaimed 1995 West End revival of Oliver!.
“People sometimes ask me what my method is,” he says, discussing his preparation to play a comedian. “And I didn’t train. I went to a theater school when I was very young, a stage school, but I didn’t train as an actor. I was very lucky to keep working.”
Originally from a tiny town near Liverpool, called the Wirral, Merseyside — “It’s very suburban, very nice, but very sheltered, and nothing like the bright lights of the city” — Webb has continued working virtually nonstop on the London stage for over three decades, most recently performing a lengthy run in The Book of Mormon on the West End, and a new musical Pinocchio at the Shakespeare’s Globe.
“I got to play The Coachman, who is the most evil villain,” Webb says. He played the role as a mixture of the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Russell Brand. “Ultimate predator, basically. Because he’s a kidnapper, he kidnaps children, he turns them into donkeys.”
Terrifying audiences was the best part, according to Webb. “There’s no other joy like it,” he enthuses. “Honestly, I love making people laugh, but I love making people scream more. Scaring people is one of my favorite pastimes.”
Presumably, he won’t be scaring the crowds at Feeling Afraid, or at Capital Pride. And, apparently, he won’t be totally on his own. “There’s this really amazing girl who was in the front row a few nights ago,” Webb tells me. “She was just this stunning, beautiful girl, and she was surrounded by this gaggle of gay guys, and she was clearly like the mother.”
The diva got Webb’s info, “and then she sent me a message afterwards saying, ‘Hey, do you want to come and join us for Pride?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, screw it. Why not?’ And so we’ve been texting and I’m going to hang out with them, and I can’t wait.”
METRO WEEKLY: So, can I call you Stevie?
STEVEN WEBB: Yes, please.
MW: Thank you. There’s another nickname listed for you on your IMDb page, The Eyebrow. Who calls you that and why?
WEBB: That’s so funny. You’ve only just reminded me of that. I remember someone telling me this about twenty years ago. Someone said, “Did you know that your nickname is The Eyebrow on…” I didn’t know if it was Wikipedia or IMDb. And only until you’ve just mentioned it, have I remembered that. I’ve never found out who added it, what it means, who calls me that, because I’ve not heard it in two decades. But yeah, The Eyebrow. Cool. I’m up on my plucking, so it’s not like I’ve got one. I don’t know what it is. Maybe I use my eyebrow a lot.
MW: There are two discernible eyebrows right there.
WEBB: I don’t know what it means.
MW: Well, you have to think about what you were doing with your eyebrows twenty years ago, I guess.
WEBB: Yeah, I wonder what it was. I remember it was when I was in the show The History Boys, and that’s when I first heard that. So maybe I was just very expressive with one singular eyebrow. Who knows?
MW: I saw Feeling Afraid on Friday night, and I really thoroughly enjoyed it. For you, does it feel like running a marathon every night?
WEBB: Yes is the straight answer to that, but I’ll elaborate a bit more, because it’s so high energy and there’s obviously no downtime. It’s a thirty-page monologue, which I’ve never done before. I’ve been in this game for over three decades, and I’ve never done a singular one-man show. I’ve done two-handers, which are exhausting by themself, but you have the downtime when the other person’s speaking. So it’s a mental challenge of remembering your lines and the structure. It’s an emotional challenge because, as you saw, this show is a bit of a hybrid of standup comedy and theater. And so there are two different disciplines that I’m having to use, and we don’t pretend the audience isn’t there because it’s set up like a standup. I have that live interaction with the audience, and so it has to change each night and I feed off them.
Then there’s the emotional arc, which is what I think is really clever about the writing, that real life crashes in, every now and then, into the set, and then it morphs into something else. And the journey that the character goes on — because the thing is, he’s got some issues, and he’s self-sabotaging and self-deprecating, and that takes a toll on oneself, just in life, when someone lives like that.
It’s exhausting mentally to always have to try and be the person that’s ahead of the other person, and trying to bring yourself down. And I get to the end of it, and it’s exhilarating, but I come off and I’ve been through something.
And American schedules are very different, because you do Sunday shows and Mondays are the days off. Normally in the U.K. we’d have maybe a matinee on Thursday and a matinee on a Saturday, but here it’s two on a Saturday, two on a Sunday. So I go through it four times in 48 hours.
MW: Maybe you want to run the marathon after the show.
WEBB: While I’m on the high.
MW: And this is your first show in the U.S.?
WEBB: It is, yeah, which when I was younger was always the dream, to perform in America. I did some films in Canada when I was younger, but I stopped thinking it would ever happen, because I’m in my 40s now. Then this opportunity came up and I couldn’t believe it. Here I am.
MW: It feels, as somebody who lives here, like a really wacky time to be in Washington, or the United States. How’s that going for you?
WEBB: It’s interesting. I’ve very much got my finger on the pulse, and I’m always getting the alerts from the news, and I’m very up-to-date, and I find it quite fascinating seeing American politics and what’s going on. But yesterday was an interesting day because it’s Pride month, I had two shows, and it was Donald Trump’s birthday, and it was just all of these weird flashes going on around me. It is a very interesting time, and the world is watching with bated breath. Whatever happens over here has a knock-on effect for us. So it’s quite important to stay on top of the news.
MW: I had the experience of coming out of a documentary yesterday about a trans teen, and the first thing I saw at the Metro was a guy in a Trump jersey.
WEBB: And then you’ve got an MMA fight down the road.
MW: It’s a little bit of a crazy time. I couldn’t help notice on Friday night a pair of straight couples, or at least boy-girl couples, in the front row and they were really loving the show. There was a joke that went over really well with them, and I have to ask about it, when your comedian refers to a part of the male anatomy that we usually call the V-line, as the “semen gutters.”
WEBB: Yes!
MW: Honestly, I know of a much more scandalous term for that. Was that ever in use in the show?
WEBB: No, I think it’s very deliberate because the thing is, as you’ve seen the show, he says some of the most crude and shocking breathtaking things where you go, “Wow, that was descriptive.” And so his choice at that moment is to not use the C-word, and say semen gutters, to try and make it sound almost romantic. And also he says it’s “what the kids call” semen gutters. So he’s also removing himself generationally from that term, which I think is really funny, and it’s so deliberate that he doesn’t say it, but then three lines later he’ll use the C-word in the most grotesque way. And I think that’s just the really fun, idiosyncratic way he phrases things.
I love seeing the reactions because I think a lot of the humor in this is very British in the way that it’s upfront, and the shock value. He’s a comedian who likes to shock, but also it’s part of his self-sabotage. Because where those crude moments come are often after a moment where he’s allowed the audience in, and they’ve warmed to him a bit, and part of his self-sabotage is then to go, “No, don’t come too close. Don’t like me. Don’t be nice to me.” And so he says something to make them go, “Whoa!”
I think it is very much part of his issue with connection. But I love seeing the reactions from different people, because we’ve had the gays, we’ve had the straight couples, we’ve had a lot of elderly people, and just seeing the different reactions is amazing. I love seeing the slightly older couples just beaming, sometimes probably having no idea what I just mentioned, but that it probably was rude.
Also there were a couple of shocking moments. When I say shocking, I mean really crude, deliberately explicit moments that often fall to silence. And it’s really interesting because I think it’s a very British thing. We’re a bit more down and dirty, and we grew up with a lot more innuendo and in-your-face explicit stuff. But then it depends who’s in, because when I think of some of the comedians in America, if you go from Joan Rivers all the way up to Nikki Glaser, that is about shock value. So it depends what the demographic is that day. And you can see that people change when they’re watching. You may have some people who are just laughing out loud at some of the more scandalous stuff, and then it loosens everybody else up and you see gradually over the play, the people who are a bit more buttoned up start to relax. And by the end, everyone’s just all together, and they’ve all leveled out and met each other in the middle.
MW: Did you see this show when it was at Edinburgh Fringe?
WEBB: No, I didn’t. I knew of it because it was the buzz of Edinburgh. It was hailed as the queer Fleabag or Baby Reindeer, those things. And our producer, Francesca Moody, produced the original Fleabag and Baby Reindeer, the shows, which were obviously then turned into hit TV programs. But I was gutted, I didn’t see it at the time. Now I’m like, oh no, maybe it’s best that I didn’t because I’m not influenced as much.
Samuel Barnett, who originated it, is a friend of mine, and it’s really interesting because twenty years ago he originated a role called Posner in Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, which is a really big show in the U.K., and it came to Broadway. And then I took over from him in that part — I was the second person to play it. And now it’s happened again, where he’s originated this role and I’ve taken over.
MW: Now that you’ve played it, would you ever consider doing standup?
WEBB: I’ve been asked to do it before because online I do comedy sketches and I write a lot of comedy, and I do faux presenting with malapropisms and very British comedy. A few years ago, someone asked if I would do a standup set for a charity event, and it was the most terrifying prospect I could think of because it’s not a character. It would be me trying to make people laugh, where I can always hide behind a character, and if something doesn’t land or if something’s not funny, not my fault, I didn’t write it. But it terrifies the fuck out of me, the thought of actually doing standup as Stevie. Because, from what I’ve seen, there’s an amount of baring your soul that it takes in true standup that I don’t know if I’m comfortable with or strong enough to do. I’m self-deprecating anyway, but not in front of everyone as much. So I don’t think I could do it. I really don’t.
MW: You didn’t write this show, and it happens that there were other people in the audience in front of me on Friday night who were having a conversation about, “I wonder how much of this story is real.” Relative to the playwright Marcelo Dos Santos, do you know if any of this is autobiographical?
WEBB: It’s not, from what I’ve spoken to him. It’s not autobiographical, but he’s picked up a lot of things that he’s seen — or people have experienced — within the gay life and the gay scene, especially since the app revolution. So it’s definitely observational, but not autobiographical.
MW: Obviously, the show isn’t about your real life. But are there aspects of this character, his relationships, his dating, the performing, that resonate with you personally?
WEBB: Oh, absolutely. There’s so many things. When I first read the script, there were so many similarities that I nearly thought I had to lawyer up because I was like, “Have you been surveilling me?” Because there were so many things that have happened in my life, which actually just made me realize how universal a lot of the issues are, and it’s not specific to me.
But sometimes it takes seeing someone else going through that shit for you to go, “Ah, so this is an international issue.” But there were a lot of things, just even down to having the same star sign, and various things about his family. And also — I’m not as bad now, but definitely when I was younger — I always had the feeling of impending doom, because I never used to really be able to enjoy anything good because I was thinking about the next thing, or when it will end rather than being in the moment and enjoying it. I still do that occasionally.
Even with this show. I think often the life of an actor is your getting the job is the fulfilling bit. And then when you get it, you’re like, “Shit, but when that finishes, what happens next?” So I’ve now managed to mentally direct myself into being in the moment. And so I’m here, and I’m doing this job, and I’m loving it, and I can’t wait to do it every single night, and I’m going to just allow that to run its course before I start panicking.
Because I have no control. And that’s the thing, when we are freaking out about not having control, you’re never going to get it, especially in my sort of career. Control is a drug, and as soon as you can release control over life and put it up to the cosmos, then I think you find things a little bit easier.
MW: I’m hearing, “panic when it’s over.”
WEBB: Yeah. Panic when it’s over, not when it’s happening.
MW: So I want to switch up a little bit. You’ve been acting, as you mentioned, for over three decades. You were acting as a kid. I imagine that child actors do not necessarily start out thinking, “Oh, and this is going to be my career.”
WEBB: Oh, I did.
MW: I was going to say, is there a point where that kicks in, but okay, it kicked in from the beginning.
WEBB: I knew when I was three and we did a school nativity play in my prep school when I was younger, and I really wanted Joseph because I was like, “That’s the lead part. I want Joseph.” And I didn’t get it because the teacher had different ideas for me, and I was so upset and she said she wanted me to be the narrator.
I was like, “What? Narrator, that sounds fucking awful.” Turned out the narrator had the most lines, was onstage for the entire show, and literally was the heart of the piece. And I learned very early on that it was actually the best part. I remember performing that so clearly. And then when the crappy little tinsel curtain came down, I remember thinking, “This is it. I want to do this for the rest of my life.”
And my parents didn’t have a choice. I just wouldn’t let it go. I’d picked up 40 instruments by this point, wanted to be a ballet dancer, wanted to be a fireman, and all of these things, and they only lasted a couple of months. But the acting after that, it continued for so many years, until I was eight or nine when there was an open audition in a newspaper for Oliver!. They were doing a stage show of Oliver! in London’s West End, a big new revival, and they were doing a nationwide search and my parents were like, “Okay, we’ll just let him go to it,” not really thinking anything would happen. And then after six months of having to travel to London for recalls, and voice calls, and all these different meetings and stuff, I eventually got the part of Oliver [and] then my life sort of took a brand new direction from such an early age.
MW: I was going to mention — because I read that you did Sam Mendes’ production of Oliver! on the West End, and it was really acclaimed — that I also did Oliver!. I played in the pit orchestra of a high school production.
WEBB: Oh, really?
MW: Which is not the same thing.
WEBB: Yes. Of course it is.
MW: Yeah. Right. Do you have a favorite memory from doing that show?
WEBB: Do you know what? It’s so funny, because I was nine when I actually played the part. I just remember running around singing and dancing, no nerves. I didn’t have any inhibitions. You just had a great time and went on. It’s really interesting looking back and realizing that self-consciousness and anxiety are something that develop much later. They are very much influenced by life and the things around you. Because the older I get, the more nervous before each show I get. It continues to grow. I think it’s because of the life you have behind you. There’s more mounting pressure to up it each time and to succeed. Whereas, actually, you don’t have any of that when you’re a kid, it’s so simple and so beautiful and pure. So that’s all I remember, is just having a whale of a time and not actually being overwhelmed by the magnitude of the job itself.
MW: Somewhere along that journey, you also came to the realization that you’re gay. Was that a complicated coming out in the midst of working constantly, too?
WEBB: No. I think it was a realization for me, but not anyone else. I think everyone was sort of just going, “One day, he’ll work it out.” But it wasn’t. When I was playing Oliver, I went to a theater school called Sylvia Young Theatre School, which is a really renowned stage school. Every kid who was working on TV, theater, and film went to that school pretty much — it was like Amy Winehouse and Emma Bunton from the Spice Girls, all these amazing people. It was a really safe space, especially during the time period. It wasn’t that everyone was out. There was obviously loads of burgeoning gay boys, and gay girls, and queer people, but we weren’t… I think it’s very different now, but there was just an unspoken comfort within those walls of that building, and the teachers and everyone knew that this was a free, special sort of bubble.
I did come out in school when I was 15, just before my last year, and I was one of the few. Not many people actually did. It wasn’t until they left. I was so lucky to be there at that school, and so it was really actually quite easy and comforting for me. And so I feel so lucky. Obviously, that was just there. There were all sorts of things to deal with, and other people. But my family were great, and the people around me were great. I’d also moved to the big city, where it was much more metropolitan and much more forward-thinking. And so I feel very lucky that I was in that time and place when I bloomed. [It] wasn’t, for me, a traumatic experience, which I feel really, really lucky about, because I know that is really actually quite rare, even today.
MW: I want to ask you about another show that you did recently — Shucked, which I think of as being so steeped in Americana. I’m curious, what is a version of that like in London? Are you all doing American accents? How did it work?
WEBB: So, it was the Broadway production. And they transferred over. We were all British, but we were playing Americans, obviously. But we love that. The Book of Mormon is still selling out 12 or 13 years later in the West End. We have so much Americana, and we love that. And the thing about Shucked, Robert Horn, who’s a good friend now, who wrote the book, he has such a quintessential, old school American humor that we grew up watching from the classic sort of films, and it has this screwball comedy aspect to it. I think if a line isn’t a gag, it’s a setup to a gag. And so, it’s relentlessly funny, which is something really British as well.
True, for me, the best British comedy, the quintessential British comedy is intelligent nonsense. So, we have Monty Python, Tommy Cooper, French & Saunders, Smack the Pony, all these. And it’s always really intelligent comedy that is stupid at the same time. And I think that really blended well with British audiences because that’s in our wheelhouse.
Shucked was just a celebration of comedy and laughter and absolute stupidity. And it’s possibly my favorite job I’ve ever done in my life. Feeling Afraid is my 40th show in my career. And I think Shucked was the most joyous experience I’ve ever done. And it was just the sort of thing that the world needs, especially what we were talking about at the beginning. There’s a lot going on, and it doesn’t take itself seriously. It doesn’t try to be too deep. It doesn’t pretend it’s something it’s not. It’s just: come and laugh and have catharsis in that shared experience of pure chaos and laughter.
We did it outdoors at the wonderful Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. As the sun’s coming down, you can see all the trees of Regent’s Park around the stage. It’s all set in that outdoors corn country, and it just worked so perfectly. And it took a minute to find its audience, because it’s not a West End theater where you get tourists and walk past — you have to know about the theater. So, it took on this sort of cult following. And by the end, you could barely get a seat. It was just a specific five-week run moment in time that I will never forget. It was one of the most magical experiences in my life.
MW: Speaking of more Americana, and because I interviewed Bruce Vilanch last year, I saw that you did—
WEBB: Here You Come Again.
MW: Did you get to meet Dolly Parton?
WEBB: No, sadly not. Dolly actually doesn’t fly that often. She doesn’t travel much. She doesn’t like traveling. And so, no, she didn’t pop over to Glasgow to come and see the show. But she gave the creators, Bruce and Trisha [Paoluccio] and Gabe [Barre], the grand rights to her entire songbook, which has never been done. This was an actual Dolly Parton musical with all of her songs. And I’m a lifelong Dolly Parton fan, so I couldn’t believe that that came up and especially some of the obscure album tracks that people don’t know about. That was also a dream job, and it was so much fun.
MW: What’s your favorite Dolly song?
WEBB: Oh, my gosh, I actually have so many. My favorite Dolly album — she did this sort of trilogy of bluegrass albums, which was Little Sparrow, The Grass Is Blue, and Halos & Horns. And that’s my favorite run of hers. I love a lot of the old stuff. “The Bargain Store” is one of my favorite songs. You know that?
MW: Yeah. I love “Bargain Store.”
WEBB: I love it so much. I think “Cash on the Barrelhead,” which is a really fun song, and “Traveling Prayer,” which is a cover, but her version of it is amazing, but also “Shine.” I mean, honestly, I could go on forever.
MW: That’s good.
WEBB: I love “He’s Alive.” Every Easter that’s blasting out of my speakers.
MW: See, now I feel really glad that I do know and love “Bargain Store,” because I don’t know those other songs.
WEBB: Yeah, well check them out.
MW: So, you brought up Smack the Pony, and I was going to ask you, because I check credits, you’ve just done The Hairdresser Mysteries for the BBC with Sally Phillips, who we have enjoyed here as the prime minister of Finland on Veep.
WEBB: Oh, my gosh, she is unreal.
MW: Are you a hairdresser on the show, or a victim?
WEBB: No. Well, I won’t give it away. But honestly, I couldn’t believe that. That was a dream. So, Smack the Pony was so influential on me, which was this troupe of funny women in the early 2000s. And it was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen.
I’ve always been such a fan of Sally Phillips. And when she popped up in Veep — she’s so perfect in that, her delivery and her dryness and the accent, everything about it. But when this came up, I could not believe my luck. And she was everything I ever wanted. But The Hairdresser Mysteries, we call them a Cozy Crime. We have these series in the U.K. called Cozy Crime. There’s Midsomer Murders and Father Brown, where it’s this small town, kind of lost in time. You’re not sure if it’s the ’60s or ’70s, or contemporary. And there’s a murder every week in this tiny town. Thousands of people have died in these tiny towns.
So, it’s a new one of those. And Sally plays this upscale hairdresser who’s just moved to this cobbled-street sort of little quaint town, and there’s a murder every week or a horrible crime. And she’s an amateur sleuth, as well as a top hairdresser, because it’s that concept that you tell everything to your hairdresser if you have a regular hairdresser. And so, she gets all the clues from her clients because they’re all so loose-lipped and stuff when she’s doing their hair and that’s her way of sleuthing. But I play an evil weatherman, who’s a bit of a celebrity weatherman, who turns up to the town, and has a secret mission. There’s someone he’s trying to find. And it’s very much a villainous role, but then I won’t say what happens, but it’s a lot of fun.
MW: So, last question. Michael Jackson.
WEBB: My friend Michael.
MW: You performed with Michael Jackson on the BRIT Awards. And it’s really funny because I started reading about it and it said something about Jarvis Cocker. I was like, “Well, who is Jarvis Cocker?” And I went to look it up and his whole story about this is crazy. So, how old were you? What did Michael smell like? And did you really get shoved off the stage?
WEBB: Yes, I did. So, it was ’96. I was 11, 12. Got it [through] the Sylvia Young Theatre School that I went to. Michael was performing “Earth Song” at the BRIT Awards and he needed lots of extras, basically. So, we’re all doing the, [sings] “What about us,” in our rags. Then at the end we all reveal beautiful clothes underneath and he’s saved the world in that classic way.
And during the performance, the lead singer of a band called Pulp, Jarvis Cocker, came on and he started just sticking up fingers and trying to disrupt the performance. And as he was being chased off, he bashed into me and I fell off the stage into the crowd onto the floor and cracked a rib. And then the audience all put me back on stage. And I just sort of carried on dazed and then came off and just went, “Uggh,” and collapsed.
But there was a big media storm about it. And it turned into a crazy story where it was being printed that he came on and he was punching kids in the face, all this sort of stuff, very tabloid stuff. [Cocker would later claim he was protesting Jackson’s portrayal of himself as a Christ-like savior.] But Michael was so lovely and so wonderful. He was the first person to call me Stevie. That’s why I’m called Stevie. My name’s Steven, but he said, [adopting a perfect MJ voice] “You know what? I’m going to call you Stevie, like my friend.” And I was like, “Okay.”
And then I realized he was probably talking about Stevie Wonder. That’s probably his friend. Also, after the performance, after rehearsal, actually, it was a dress rehearsal, he took off the tape, the white tape from his fingers, and handed it to me and I’ve still got it. I’ve still got the three pieces of tape. And what did he smell like? I don’t know if I got that close, but I’m pretty sure he smelled like silk, if I remember correctly.
Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen runs through July 12, at Studio Theatre, 1501 14th St. NW. Tickets are $42 to $93, with discount options available. Call 202-332-3300, or visit StudioTheatre.org.
Source: Metro Weekly – www.metroweekly.com
