“I am in my 60th year,” says Alan Cumming, drolly. “Isn’t that nuts?” While he’s technically still 59, the two-time Tony winner is just a Broadway baby at heart. Look no further than his cabaret show, Alan Cumming Is Not Acting His Age—a musical exploration about growing up—which has its second New York performance on Monday, March 25, at Studio 54.
“It’s about my thoughts on getting older, aging—something we’re all doing,” says Cumming. “Wondering why we have all decided that is the worst possible thing that can happen to you, when it’s inexorable.” In the cabaret show, which sees Cumming perform rousing renditions of varied numbers—from Adele’s “When We Were Young” to the song book of John Kander and Fred Ebb—Cumming rails against society’s preconceived notions about getting older. “My big message is, I don’t think we should act our age, because I think that means we’re allowing other people to dictate to us how we should experience life,” he says. “I think that’s death.”
Completing a full circle, Alan Cumming Is Not Acting His Age is going up at Studio 54, the same theater where he played the Emcee in Cabaret in 1998—for which he won his first Tony—and reprised the role in a production 16 years later. “For me to do a cabaret at the place where I spent so long doing Cabaret, it’s perfect,” he says.
By Bob McClenahan.
Studio 54 also spawned another beloved facet of Cumming’s life: Club Cumming, which began as an after-party in his dressing room during his Cabaret days. The revelry eventually became its own institution as an East Village bar and performance venue, but there’s a blue neon sign under the window of his dressing room that declares it “The Original Home of Club Cumming.”
“My friend Carmine sent me a picture when there was a storm last year. It said, “The Original Home of Cum,” because the lights…” he says, laughing. “I’ve heard every joke about my name, but that actually made me laugh.”
Part of what keeps Cumming young are his friends, including Kristin Chenoweth, Vanessa Williams, and Jane Krakowski, all of whom were in the audience of his first performance of Alan Cumming Is Not Acting His Age on March 11. “I joke in the show that all my peers have kind of gone by the wayside,” he says. “It may seem an extreme thing to do, but in order to have both a stream of new young friends and a venue with where to party with them, I bought my own club.” If you can believe it, owning a popular downtown speakeasy can lead to wild arrangements of starry individuals crossing paths.
“Billie Jean King came. I tell a story about her in the show,” he says. “She and Emma Stone and Paul McCartney all came to Club Cumming, and we sang a song. It’s like, Paul McCartney, Billie Jean King, and Emma Stone walk into a bar—hilarity ensues.”