The mask has always been a huge part of Orville Peck's presentation and mystique. When Peck, a former indie rocker, debuted his queer country persona with his 2019 debut album Pony, he kept his face hidden behind a kind of fringed Lone Ranger mask. The mask has been through a few different redesigns since then, but he's never performed or posed for photos without covering his face. Earlier this year, we learned that Peck would join the cast of the current Broadway revival of the classic musical Cabaret, playing the Emcee. Now, Peck announces that he'll play the role without a mask.
Orville Peck promised his unmasking in a recent New York Times profile, and he wore the mask while he did the interview, but there's a preview of his face you can see below. Peck says, "The mask is part of my expression personally as an artist and a very big personal part of me. 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."
The Cabaret role is a big deal. When the play debuted in 1966, the Emcee was played by Joel Grey, who won a Tony for that portrayal and an Oscar for the play's film adaptation. In the current revival, the Emcee has been played by Eddie Redmayne and Adam Lambert. Regarding his unmasking, Peck says, "I wouldn’t have necessarily done this for just anything, but this is probably my favorite musical of all time."
According to the Times, Orville Peck grew up in Johannesburg, and both of his parents worked in the theater -- his father as a sound engineer, his mother as an usher. Earlier in his career, Peck danced and acted professionally, and he also played in punk and hardcore bands. According to the Times' Erik Piepenburg, Peck draws on his punk-band cast in the Cabaret rehearsals. Singing opening number "Willkommen," he "looked less like a German fop welcoming the curious to a Berlin nightclub and more like the Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins summoning the sweaty to a mosh pit circa 1984." Read the Times profile here.
Peck's run in Cabaret begins 3/31 at the August Wilson Theater, and it runs through 7/20.
