LONDON — Matt Willis says it matters that his son has seen him in Cabaret, where the Busted star is currently playing the Emcee opposite Katie Hall’s Sally Bowles at the Kit Kat Club in London, April 9, 2026.
That is bigger than a sweet family anecdote. Willis has tied the show to a rejection of toxic masculinity, which gives extra force to the idea of a child watching his father step into one of musical theatre’s slipperiest roles: a figure built on charm, theatricality and menace, all while the world around him curdles.
The official current cast page lists Willis and Hall in the lead roles through May 23, 2026, making this a defined West End chapter rather than a cameo. It also helps explain why his latest remarks have landed: audiences are not looking at an experiment from the sidelines, but at a full run inside one of London’s most closely watched musical revivals.
Matt Willis says the role lands differently when family is watching
There is real continuity between Willis’ recent comments and the way he has talked about the part since taking it on. In a January interview with London Theatre, he called rehearsals a “bootcamp,” described the job as throwing himself into the “deep end,” and reminded readers that he is, in his own words, a theatre kid. That matters, because it frames this performance less as celebrity casting and more as a role he wanted to earn.
Willis also made clear that he was not interested in playing the Emcee as a neat piece of polish. He said he wanted his version to feel “a bit more grungy, a bit more messy,” which is a useful way into the part. In this production, the Emcee is never just an emcee. He is a seducer, a witness, a warning and, at times, the ugliest version of power dressed up as entertainment.
That helps explain why Willis speaking about his son seeing the show feels significant. The point is not simply that a boy saw his dad onstage. The point is that he saw his dad inhabit a character built on theatrical shapeshifting, seduction and threat. That sits directly against the stiff, performative codes that often underpin toxic masculinity.
Matt Willis is stepping into a revival with its own history
There is also weight in where Willis has landed. Playbill’s casting report placed him and Hall in the line of successors to Reeve Carney and Eva Noblezada, while a set of March production photos from WhatsOnStage showed just how firmly the pair now sit inside Rebecca Frecknall’s bruised, decadent world. This is a revival that has had years to sharpen its identity, not a show still deciding what it wants to say.
That longer history matters because the themes Willis is talking about are not new additions. When Frecknall’s version opened in 2021, The Guardian’s review argued that the production pulled audiences in with flamboyant camp before turning that pleasure into menace that felt newly charged. That is part of why the toxic-masculinity angle does not feel bolted on in 2026. Cabaret has always worked best when its glamour is inseparable from its warning.
There is family continuity here, too. In 2021, The Independent reported on Emma Willis defending Ace’s individuality after criticism over his clothes and appearance. Set against that backdrop, Matt Willis’ latest comments sound less like a sudden talking point and more like continuation. The family has already been public about resisting old gender rules.
That is what gives this moment more bite than a routine promotional line. Willis is inside a show that weaponizes performance against repression, and he seems to understand that the lesson is not abstract. If his son sees that masculinity can be staged, distorted, mocked and challenged, then the show has done something valuable beyond selling tickets.
For Willis, that may be the clearest measure of whether the role is landing. Not just applause, not just reviews, but the fact that someone young sat in the audience and watched a father take apart the costume of certainty. In a culture still teaching boys to confuse hardness with strength, that makes this Cabaret run feel unusually timely.
