Alan Cumming is to present his one-man show Alan Cumming Is Not Acting His Age in London, Manchester and Glasgow in January 2024.
Alan Cumming is to present his one-man show Alan Cumming Is Not Acting His Age at London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall and Glasgow’s SEC Armadillo in January 2024.
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Monday 15 and Tuesday 16 January 2024 at London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane
Thursday 18 January 2024 at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall
Saturday 20 January 2024 at Glasgow SEC Armadillo
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What exactly is acting your age? And who decides? These are the questions Alan Cumming has been grappling with for a very long time.
Alan Cumming said, ‘I’m constantly told, even now in my sixth decade, that I am child-like or puckish, and yet at the same time I’m also called a silver fox and a daddy. I think we all get really mixed messages about ageing. We’re told to worship at the fountain of youth, to do everything we can to our bodies and our minds to stay young, yet then we bandy around pejoratives like “grow up” or “act your age”, even that we’re “mutton dressed as lamb”. I feel I’m still at an age where I can dance till dawn but also be able to dole out some wisdom to my fellow revellers! Wisdom is just being able to recognize the repeating patterns that emerge as you get older, and maybe deciding to react to them differently. It’s just the same show with different costumes.’
In Alan Cumming Is Not Acting His Age, he covers all the bases: sex, death and bacchanalia, with a set list as eclectic as the man himself. Songs from Cabaret authors Kander and Ebb blend with contemporary favourites and even a self-penned paean against plastic surgery. He also discusses the effects of gravity, the time the mum from the Brady Bunch asked him to punch her, and what his dog taught him about the quality of life.
Alan Cumming’s most recent range of eclectic projects include creating a solo dance theatre piece about the Scottish bard Robert Burns, lip-synching the protagonist in a documentary, hosting the American version of the The Traitors, directing a podcast series about a sperm bank heist, playing a gangster opposite Liam Neason in a Neil Jordan film, curating a cabaret festival in Australia and recording a duet with a Gaelic rapper.
Thirty years ago, his Hamlet stormed the West End, a quarter of a century ago he was a sensation as Cabaret’s Master of Ceremonies in a production that forever changed the Broadway landscape, A decade ago his visceral, virtually one man Macbeth was a stunning, transatlantic coup de theatre.
His screen work ranges from art house to blockbuster, cult to mainstream, but his performances are always indelible and some immortal: Mr Floop in Spy Kids, Eli in The Good Wife, Nightcrawler in X2: X Men United, Sebastian in The High Life, ‘O’ in Sex and the City, Boris in Goldeneye, King James in Doctor Who, Sandy Frink in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, Mayor Menlove in Schmigadoon and himself on Broad City.
He is the author of six books including a New York Times #1 bestselling memoir, performs in concert regularly in halls around the world and co-owns his own, eponymous cabaret bar Club Cumming, a home for ‘all ages, all genders, all colours, all sexualities, where kindness is all and anything could happen!’
The list of his collaborators over the years includes Liza Minnelli, Jeremy O. Harris, Jackie Chan, the Smurfs, David Bowie, The Simpsons, Robert Wilson, Stanley Kubrick, Jay Z, Bianca Del Rio, the Spice Girls, George Lucas, Terence Blanchard, KT Tunstall and not forgetting Dora the Explorer, Arthur and Elmo.
He had a photo exhibition named Alan Cumming Snaps! and an award-winning fragrance named Cumming. He has played Dionysus, the Devil, God, the Pope and was shot by Herb Ritts for Vanity Fair as Pan. He recently played a 70 year old woman. He has been a Lee Jeans model and on a stamp. He is a Tony and Olivier award winning theatre actor. He hosted the Tonys and was nominated for an Emmy for doing so. In fact he has been nominated for five Emmys, won a New York Emmy, a Scottish BAFTA and a British Comedy Award. He is an Independent Spirit award-winning producer and National Board of Review winning director. He is a Grammy and multiple Golden Globe nominee. His portrait hangs in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. He has four honourary doctorates and over forty awards for being a humanitarian, but as he says, ‘awards mean nothing’!
