First things first: The mask is coming off.
Ever since the country singer Orville Peck was announced as the next Emcee in Rebecca Frecknall’s ritzy production of “Cabaret,” invested circles have speculated feverishly about Mr. Peck’s signature accessory: Would he possibly give up his sartorial calling card? How could he deliver an honest, Broadway-worthy performance without a full face’s worth of emotion?
But in a recent interview, the singer confirmed that he would not be masked when he makes his Broadway debut later this month.
“The mask is part of my expression personally as an artist and a very big personal part of me,” Mr. Peck, 37, said during the (masked) interview at the Civilian Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. “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.”
It’s been a long time since he’s performed without a mask, Mr. Peck recalled, saying that he anticipated feeling “a little shook” at his first performance, on March 31. 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.”
In January, it was announced that Mr. Peck, who is gay, would be replacing Adam Lambert in the current Broadway revival of “Cabaret,” Kander and Ebb’s revered 1966 musical about the goings-on at a decadent Berlin nightclub as the Nazis come to power. (Joel Grey originated the role of the enigmatic Emcee; Eddie Redmayne did so in this production.)
Performing maskless may be out of Mr. Peck’s comfort zone, but the stage is not. He grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa, with parents who met working in the theater world; his father was a sound engineer and his mother an usher.
Mr. Peck said he studied ballet and tap as a boy, and later danced and acted professionally. Long a fan of country music, he eventually transitioned into a country-music artist who counts Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard as inspirations and Willie Nelson and Kylie Minogue as duet partners.
But it’s Mr. Peck’s background playing in punk and hard-core bands that may most inform his performance in “Cabaret.” At least that’s how it appeared during a recent rehearsal, as he and cast members ran through the show’s opening number, “Willkommen.”
With short-cropped hair and wearing a black T-shirt over his lean torso — and no mask on — Mr. Peck 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.
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.
After rehearsal, Mr. Peck all but collapsed on the floor. “I’m feeling the most tired I’ve ever felt in my life, truly,” he said with a laugh.
In interviews, Mr. Peck has explained that his signature masks — stylistically, they range from minimalist Lone Ranger to maximalist bordello curtain — make him feel safe enough to open himself up artistically, a potentially vulnerable position. Yet Mr. Peck said it wasn’t a hard decision to forgo one in “Cabaret.”
“I wouldn’t have necessarily done this for just anything,” Mr. Peck explained. “But this is probably my favorite musical of all time.”
Mr. Peck said he had recently come across a journal entry he wrote at 14 in which he dreamed of one day playing the Emcee. 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.
Mr. Peck’s dance card has been full since he moved from Los Angeles back to New York, where he lived in 2011 for about a year. He recently attended the opening of a photo exhibition by his friend Norman Reedus and joined Patti Smith and other singers at Carnegie Hall for a benefit concert for Tibet House US.
Also filling out his New York social calendar: meals at Cafe Gitane, concerts at Brooklyn Steel and nights on his couch to cheer on Onya Nurve, a front-runner on the current season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” Through his mask, his eyes lit up as he described watching a video of Onya singing “Maybe This Time,” a song Liza Minnelli memorably crooned in the 1972 film adaptation of “Cabaret.”
“It’s incredible,” he gushed, adding, “My biggest friend group in the gay scene, no matter where, are usually drag queens.”
Mr. Peck said he also enjoys hanging out with friends — unmasked! — at the Eagle, a gay leather bar in Manhattan where jockstrap night is a popular draw.
“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.”
Mr. Peck said he would consider doing another musical one day, perhaps to play El Gallo, the bandit narrator of “The Fantasticks,” a role that might not require him to take off his mask. (His cast-recording collection leans more Golden Age than Digital Era: “I stopped following musical theater around ‘Wicked,’” he confessed.)
For now, Mr. Peck sounded at peace with ditching the disguise.
“Change is good,” he said. “Nothing is permanent.”
