How Jenni Barber Stays Upbeat Around the Undead in Beetlejuice on Broadway

Funny lady Jenni Barber is getting big laughs on Broadway again, this time in Beetlejuice at the Palace Theatre. This season in New York is beginning to look like a Barber renaissance, with The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee opening off-Broadway timed to the show’s 20th anniversary, the Muppets taking the stage in Rob Lake Magic with Special Guests The Muppets and, of course, the movie sequel Wicked: For Good hitting theaters. Barber made her Broadway debut in 2007 as lonely heart Olive Ostrovsky in Spelling Bee, played Glinda at the Gershwin in 2014 and starred as Lisa Heffenbacher in Sesame Workshop’s The Electric Company in 2009. Even her one-time co-star in The Performers, Cheyenne Jackson, is back on Broadway in Oh, Mary! Barber sat down with Broadway.com Managing Editor Beth Stevens to discuss her latest place among the playbills.

“The fact that Spelling Bee is back is the greatest thing,” Barber said. “It was my Broadway debut, and we just lost sweet [composer William] Bill Finn recently. It is so magical to know that his work is continuing on. The theme of that was a young girl who was dealing with grief, abandonment and loss. And now Beetlejuice having that kind of parallel story of home and belonging is really, really amazing.”

She’s used to finding humor in dark places. Even now, as the eccentric life coach and stepmother Delia Schlimmer, Barber is digging deep to understand her character’s motivation. “All the things that Delia is saying are about wanting to belong, about wanting to be helpful, about trying to maintain this positive philosophy about life, and I mean, I get it,” Barber said. “She has this incredible bridge in 'No Reason' about the dark parts of her life, the circumstances of her life that she's dealing with. She talks about wanting to have a family, she talks about abandonment and her husband leaving her, she talks about freezing her eggs. I really get it where she's grasping for a place to belong.”

Barber says of tackling the character created by Catherine O’Hara in the Tim Burton film and originated on Broadway by Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer, there is “a little bit of room for my own sense of play." She hints at a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Wicked reference ad-libbed during the show. Comedy, for Barber, is all about staying grounded. “I play characters that aren't really tethered to the ground. They come from the air, but the objective is to try to find a place to hold onto."

As for herself, Barber loves being a part of such a passionate, positive company, always inspired by their diehard fans. So many audience members attend performances of Beetlejuice in costume that the musical has taken on its own Rocky Horror-style participatory following. She sees the devoted fanbase as a response to the “absurd honesty” the show’s director Alex Timbers has encouraged in rehearsals. “The fertile playground that he's created, it's so fun you want to be a part of it.”

Though her time onstage and backstage at Beetlejuice comes with its own share of spooky stories, Barber says she’s open to the idea of spiritual possession if the right ghost were to come along. Her top two candidates for a temporary body snatching are actress Judy Holliday and abstract artist Hilma af Klint.

“I was actually at MoMA, at an exhibit of hers, when I got the call to do this,” Barber recalled of Klint. “I'm sitting there and I'm looking at all these beautiful paintings of naturalism and she's talking about spirituality. Actually, we had just been at Bill Finn's memorial, and I was like, ‘Oh this is really profound and I feel like something else is happening,’ and it felt like a real transitional moment. And then I got a text message.” That was how she learned she'd booked the role of Delia in Beetlejuice on Broadway.

Watch the full interview below!

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