12 hours ago
Orville Peck Takes Off the Mask for Upcoming 'Cabaret' Role
READ TIME: 5 MIN.
There's another mask coming off on Broadway (and it is not with the return of the Phantom).
This time, it's queer country music artist Orville Peck, who has made a mask part of his act since 2019 upon the release of his first album, "Pony." He joins the cast of Rebecca Frecknall's hit production of "Cabaret" on March 31 replacing Adam Lambert as the Emcee. Eddie Redmayne played the character previously when the production opened at the August Wilson Theatre a year ago.
From simple Lone Ranger masks to elaborate ones with foot-long fringe, the accessory has been integral to Peck's public persona.
"The mask is part of my expression personally as an artist and a very big personal part of me," Peck told the New York Times. "But I'm here to play this role and to bring respect and integrity and hopefully a good performance to it. It's not about me. I'm not trying to make it the Orville Peck show."
He admitted he will likely be "a little shook" at his first performance. "His fans might be, too: Many have been eager to see the singer's face since 2019, when he released his debut country album, 'Pony,'" the Times said.
Peck, though, is no stranger to theater. He was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, to parents who worked in the industry – his father a sound engineer, his mother an usher. He studied ballet and tap as a boy and later acted professionally. But music was his calling, in one of the most gay-unfriendly genres which he has succeeded in the past six years to establish himself, but always with his mask on.
After seeing Peck do a run-through of "Wilkommen," the musical's opening number, the Times concluded it is "background playing in punk and hard-core bands that may most inform his performance." Maskless, with cropped hair and wearing a black T-shirt, he resembled Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins in the 1980s.
"As he cavorted across the makeshift stage, Mr. Peck flexed his muscles, narrowed his eyes and sang in a booming baritone – he looked rascally, menacing, in heat. But then he extended a leg, lifted his opposite heel and, lickety-split, stuck out his buns. The butch-femme push-pull that defines his country persona was there, even if his mask was not," the Times said.
His masks, he has explained, make him feel safe enough to open himself up artistically, a potentially vulnerable position. Peck said it was an easy choice to forgo one in "Cabaret," however.
"I wouldn't have necessarily done this for just anything," Peck explained. "But this is probably my favorite musical of all time." He mentioned how he recently found a journal entry from when he was 14 in which he dreamed of playing the Emcee sometime. What he didn't expect was to star in the show at a time when, as he put it, "it doesn't feel like we're doing a period piece, a throwback."
"Regardless of whatever your politics lean, I don't think anybody can come see the show and not agree that it is frighteningly similar, if not exactly what is happening at the moment," he said.
He pointed out how wearing a mask has given him the anonymity he needs in his private life, such as going out in New York City where he has relocated to queer venues like the Eagle. "The irony is that if I put my mask on, I'm suddenly not anonymous anymore," he said. "The weird part is for me to be anonymous. I just take my mask off and walk around like normal and then no one knows who I am."
But he admitted he's fine with unmasking. "Change is good," he said. "Nothing is permanent."
He also admitted having a favorite in this season's "RuPaul's Drag Race": Onya Nurve, the drag star who blew Peck away with her rendition of "Maybe This Time."
"It's incredible," he gushed. "My biggest friend group in the gay scene, no matter where, are usually drag queens."
