Cumming gets sappy at cabaret
Alan Cumming has a softer side, he insists. No, really.
“I’ve always been sappy,” he says. “I’m Scottish — we’re very sentimental.”
The star of TV, film and theater will perform “Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs” at 8 p.m. Monday at Orlando’s Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. (Tickets start at $35; call 844-513-2014).
His notable roles range from the mutant Nightcrawler in the 2003 film “X2: X-Men United” to driven political operative Eli Gold on TV’s “The Good Wife” to the sexily carefree Emcee in Broadway’s “Cabaret,” a role that won him a Tony Award.
In his touring show, he tells stories and sings pop songs and standards. He hopes the title doesn’t lose something in translation.
“‘Sappy’ has a slightly different meaning to Americans,” he says, acknowledging that the word leads some to think of melodramatic mush. “For me, it means emotional songs — songs that just get you. It’s an emotional evening, but it’s going to be funny as well.”
While in Orlando, he might be sharing a colorful — or painful — story about hitting the slopes. When I talk to Cumming, he’s at the Upstate New York retreat he shares with his husband, graphic artist Grant Shaffer.
“Tomorrow’s our 10th anniversary, and we’re going to be very adventurous,” he says. “I’ll be skiing around like a teenager instead of a man in his sixth decade.”
Cumming is actually 52: “I’m old, but I still have a lot of tricks up my sleeve,” he jokes. The world already knows him as an actor and author — he has written a novel and a memoir — but now he’s introducing Alan Cumming the person.
For years, he found the idea of performing as himself terrifying.
“When it’s just you and not a character, it’s a very different ballgame,” he says. “There’s a lot of vulnerability there. It took me a long time to get comfortable with that. I didn’t feel big enough.”
Conquering that fear, however, has proved rewarding.
“The connection to the audience is so much stronger,” he says of performing his one-man cabaret. “I’m actually talking to them.”
He likes that with its mix of music and sharing, the cabaret art form allows performers to “talk about what’s happening now,” he says. “Cabaret has always been a form that’s used as a way to comment on, or protest, what’s going on.”
It’s not lost on him that he’s now performing a cabaret act after conquering Broadway in Kander & Ebb’s “Cabaret” — twice. After winning the Tony for a 1998 production, he returned to the role in 2014 for a six-month run that was extended to nearly a year because of audience demand.
“‘Cabaret’ has been such a big part of my life,” he muses. “I just can’t quit ya, ‘Cabaret.’ ”