Willkommen, Orville Peck's face!
The queer country singer, whose fringed mask during performances has become synonymous with his brand, staged the "face reveal of the century," as TodayTix remarked on Instagram, in a new photo shoot for The New York Times.
Peck revealed to the Grey Lady that the mask would not come with him as he takes on the role of the Emcee for Broadway's Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club.
The mask is coming off.
“The mask is part of my expression personally as an artist and a very big personal part of me,” Peck, 37, told NYT during a masked interview. “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.”
“I wouldn’t have necessarily done this for just anything. But this is probably my favorite musical of all time,” he added.
While not a full reveal, the NYT photograph shows a smiling Peck without a mask. An eye with makeup meets the camera while leather gloves still obscure part of his face, although his eyebrow and forehead are visible.
On Instagram, fans were excited for the opportunity to see Peck unmasked onstage when he begins performances on March 31. "So cool! * Books flight to New York *" wrote user @wittyleakss. "He’s gorgeous! Just as I suspected," complimented user @anthonyis_here.
Peck succeeds another out singer, Adam Lambert, in the role of Emcee, who in the musical presides over the shows in a decadent Berlin club during the rise of Nazism in Germany. As Peck told NYT, the story hits close to him in the Trump era, and “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.
Learn more about Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, playing at Broadway's August Wilson Theatre, at kitkatclub.com.
