If Alan Cumming wins the Tony Sunday night, it'll be the crowning award in a series including the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards. His stellar turn in "Cabaret" has made him a New York sensation--and it's all the more stunning to the Scottish-born 33-year-old performer "who always wanted to be an actor, but never dreamed of being a Broadway musical star." "Cabaret" marks his Broadway debut.
But then his "emcee" interpretation--a role hitherto identified with Joel Grey--is chilling: an eye-rolling, hip-swiveling sleaze who is at once the soul of decadence and a seductive charmer. Indeed, at the end, at least to this viewer, he is so irredeemably debauched he's paradoxically an innocent, not unlike a joyous infant who simply can't help it.
Cumming is not sure that his emcee is all that innocent, but he acknowledges "the naughty child" element in the spin. "You know you want to be bad," in character, he intones, beckoning with his index finger. "At the same time, the emcee is issuing a warning: 'Too many candies will make you sick.' "
In person--we meet in a hotel room near the theatre--Cumming is reticent, soft spoken, and doe eyed; it's a shy quality in sharp contrast to his lewd onstage persona and even to a certain punkishness he hints at offstage as well. In his ear and his eyebrow, he sports earrings.
Commenting on this Tony-nominated revival of "Cabaret," which evokes the garish brutality of a George Grosz painting, Cumming notes, "We wanted to create the flavor of the time. It's a toughened version compared to the original. We're challenging the audience sexually, politically. And the audience becomes a participant. The more the audience enjoys itself, the more implicitly it becomes part of the evil."
Compared to Joel Grey's emcee--an androgynous marionette spawned by the Weimer culture--Cumming is more actively engaged in the story. He also serves as an outside interpreter.
"He watches what's happening on stage; he watches the audience and then asks them to make up their own minds, 'This is funny, isn't it?' And then a little later, I turn it around and say, 'What are you laughing at? It's horrible.' And they're unsettled. On one level he's a metaphor, on another he's a real person, getting increasingly less charming. Yet the audience is moved by him, especially at the end."
Indeed, the audience likes him so much, the line between Cumming-the-actor-playing-a-role and Cumming-the-person has blurred for some who feel free to grope him on- and offstage. He now has a waiting car to take him home right after each performance. He has also received his share of obscene letters boasting perverted requests and propositions.
"They're projecting their sexuality onto me. Although celebrity is more valued in America than it is in England, I had more problems with that kind of thing [personal assault] there than here. Yes, English sexuality is based on repression--corsets under the suits and all boys want to be spanked and that kind of thing--but there's also more comfort with sexuality. They're more open about it."
Shakespeare and Stand-up
Although Cumming is new to Broadway, he enjoys a reputation in the U.K. on TV and in theatre. He has appeared with the Royal National and the Royal Shakespeare companies, earning a host of awards including the Olivier for his role in "Accidental Death of an Anarchist," and an Olivier nomination for his "Cabaret" spin.
Brought up in the Scottish Highlands, the son of a forester, Cumming attended the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama--"a mixed-bag experience that looks better to me now than it did at the time." Following his three-year stint at the school, Cumming and a pal launched a stand-up comic routine, "Victor and Barry." Centering on the hapless exploits of "two posh guys from Glasgow--now there's an oxymoron," he chortles--the duo garnered a cult following which in turn paved the way for both television and theatre roles.
Still, it is Cumming's experience as a stand-up, specifically the improvisatory skills that he developed on the nightclub circuit, that has had the most direct bearing on his current emcee gig, he notes. The emcee in this production is in constant ad-lib contact with the audience--flirting, chiding, and even inviting members of the audience up on stage to dance with him. "Sometimes I misjudge who I bring up. There was one man who had something around his neck. I assumed it was a camera and when I asked him, he told me it was his heart monitor." To demonstrate his response, Cumming coyly points his finger, " 'Now, you go sit down immediately,' I said to him." It's all endearingly bad boy.
Cumming admits frankly that the biggest challenge for him is the singing and dancing: "I'm not really trained in either. I took singing lessons for this show, but still don't consider myself a singer or dancer." To judge by the response, public and critical, it has made no difference on either side of the Atlantic.
Yet it's New York's reaction to the whole show that has most affected him. "Here the audience is so visibly moved. Perhaps that's in part because there are so many Jews and gays in New York. The material talks to them directly. But I also think New Yorkers are more willing to have an experience in a theatre. In London, there's a slight reticence to being manipulated. They're uncomfortable with anything they suspect is schmaltzy or sentimental."
Cumming makes another point: Because Europe was the scene of the Holocaust and Nazism, there are ever-present reminders. And to that extent, the population has become a little inured to the horror. "In this country it still has the power to shock." q
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