CUMMING OR GOING, YOU’LL WANT TO SEE THIS ONE
Man of many parts, Alan Cumming discusses life’s big issues: death, love, and, yes, the size of his scrotum in Alan Cumming Is Not Acting His Age, a cabaret that started on the West End and will soon be returning to Broadway’s Studio 54. Accompanied by a versatile and accomplished set of musicians — James Harvey (musical director, piano), Eleanor Norton (cello), Augie Hass (trumpet), and Chris Jago (drums) — he regaled the potentially stuffy Sanders Theater crowd (it’s Harvard, after all) with hilarious stories, insightful observations, and spirited deliveries of his Broadway, Disney, and cabaret musical selections, even sitting down at the piano at one point.
He came out swinging (his hips) in a black-and-white striped suit, red carnation in his lapel. to belt out Charles Strouse and Lee Adams’ “But Alive” from Applause, immediately wiping out Lauren Bacall from memory. “I feel wicked and wacky and mellow—but alive!”
Having whipped the audience into a swoon of pleasure with his spunky rendition, he pauses to ask, “Who decides what it means to act your age?” He painted a picture of a panel of people in white coats holding clipboards that might issue statements such as “You’re 52 now. Your main source of exercise will be golf.” Since no such panel exists (fortunately), he urged the audience to “Live!”
“Acting your age is spiritually botoxing yourself,” he warned.
Cumming’s accomplishments are astonishing. He has played Hamlet and Macbeth and won a Tony award for his role as emcee in Cabaret. He has appeared in Doctor Who and Schmigadoon, Sex and the City and Spy Kids. A proud supporter of the Scottish Nationalist Party, he has created a dance piece about poet Robert Burns. Time magazine called him “one of the three most fun people in show business” (along with Cher and Stanley Tucci), and based on the name-dropping in his stories, that must be the case.
His accounts span generations of performers, including the time that Emma Stone, Billie Jean King, and Paul McCartney all showed up together at his Club Cumming in the East Village, as well as the time that he and Florence Henderson (of The Brady Bunch) snuck a private supply of vodka into Broadway-legend Carol Channing’s 95th birthday party.
As we age, he told us, it’s important to think of the lessons we’ve learned from those who have departed this life. He then proceeded to offer the lessons he had learned from his dog, from the afore-mentioned Florence Henderson, and from fellow Scotsman Sean Connery, with whom he shared a history of an abusive childhood and who dubbed Cumming his son. (And since Connery, according to Cumming, was the King of Scotland, Cumming thus became the Prince.)
The stories alternated with songs such as Adele’s “When We Were Young,” “Maybe This Time I’ll Be Lucky,” “It Was a Good Time,” “Falling in Love Again,” and a medley of Disney Princess songs, all performed with Cummings’s unique joie de vivre.
In short, it is likely that everyone who saw the show walked out buoyed with appreciation for “life’s banquet,” as Cummings put it, and eager to dig in to its pleasures.
If you’re in NYC on March 25, Cummings is returning with this show to Studio 54, where he originated the role of the Emcee in Roundabout’s update of Cabaret.
photos by Robert Torres/Celebrity Series of Boston
Alan Cumming Is Not Acting His Age
presented by Celebrity Series of Boston
reviewed at Sanders Theater, Cambridge MA on March 15, 2024
for tickets on Broadway March 25, visit Criterion
for more tour dates, visit Alan Cumming
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Very nice review — does remarkably well to convey his vitality!