Cabaret’s Mason Alexander Park: ‘It’s sad how people can dehumanise someone they don’t know’

It’s a sunny afternoon in London when I catch up with Cabaret star Mason Alexander Park (albeit via Zoom) and get the most meta news I’ve heard in a while.

“Emily Hampshire who plays Stevie [in Schitt’s Creek]? She’s coming to the show because we we met at a Comic Con last year when I was promoting The Sandman. I was just like, ‘Oh my God, I loved you on Schitt’s Creek!'”

As someone whose only visible reference of Cabaret before seeing Mason perform in it was Emily Hampshire’s emotional performance of ‘Maybe This Time’ on Schitt’s Creek, this news delighted me.

And I’m sure Emily herself will be even more delighted being able to experience Mason’s stunning turn as the show’s Emcee, taking the reigns from the likes of Eddie Redmayne, Alan Cumming and Callum Scott Howells.

“It’s quite a spectacular world to enter every day. You know, I’m actually really weirdly envious of the audiences now that I’m in it,” Mason tells me.

“The show is so astounding and immersive and unlike any other production of Cabaret, so even if you know the show or even if you’ve see, 18 different versions of it, nothing can really prepare you for this.”

Indeed, the production is an extravaganza of queer energy. As you enter the theatre, it transports you into a world of bohemian debauchery, where contortionists and musicians hang from the walls, greeting patrons with their fabulous weirdness. The highlight, however, is Mason’s performance – part-comedy, part-tragedy, with vocals that soar above the rafters. Every moment they’re off-stage is a moment you’re wondering when they’ll return.

A star of both stage and screen, the performer is giving hit series like The Sandman and Quantum Leap a short break, taking on the Emcee role at London’s Playhouse Theatre till September.

‘I don’t think it’s anything anyone should have to go through’

Asked whether they felt safe in London as a non-binary trans person, Mason said it was being online that they feared the most.

“Every queer person that I know at some point or another has received a message from some random person or some bot. But to get it like every day on a loop, you know from like hundreds and hundreds of people, I don’t think it’s anything any person should ever really have to go through or experience.”

This led me into asking what Mason thought of the Dylan Mulvaney situation, with the actor answering: “I mean, I just feel really sad that it is a situation. It’s very silly that people care so desperately about like that, that it’s become the kind of media firestorm that it is.

“It’s really sad just how quickly people can dehumanise an individual that they don’t know, a demographic, based on a thing that they think they understand about a community of people. I’m getting really tired of it to be honest.”

‘History repeats itself’

Pivoting back to Cabaret, set in late-1920s Berlin as the Nazis are ascending to power, Mason says: “It’s remarkable how closely the themes of the show parallel things that we are seeing in our current experience, in our lifetime with the queer community, with the rise of anti-Semitism.

“Things have become so black and white and so binary about trying to pit these extremes against each other and trying to turn trans people into groomers and create all of these buzzwords that affect people in a way that makes them fearful of human beings that are just humans, and that’s exactly what was going on in the 1920s and the 1930s [in Germany].

“History repeats itself. Things really can become quite repetitive if you allow them to, so the show is a really wonderful reminder that we should never forget the atrocities of the past and allow them to repeat themselves.”

Tickets for Cabaret at the KitKat Club at the Playhouse Theatre are available from the theatre’s website.