Before Mason Runs

Dispatching to Mason has a cost.
Mason has to translate the URI to a component.
Load the component
Execute it
If your component will just issue a redirect, why not do that without Mason?
For example, you can do access checks before Mason.
Enter MasonX::WebApp:

package My::WebApp;

use base 'MasonX::WebApp';

sub _init {
    my $self = shift;
    $self->_check_auth;
}

sub _check_auth {
    my $self = shift;

    if ( $self->apache_req->uri =~ m{^/admin} ) {
        $self->_require_admin;
    }
}

sub _require_admin {
    my $self = shift;

    $self->redirect( uri => '/' )
        unless $self->current_user->is_admin;
}