This quality, often annoyingly referred to as childlike or puckish, got the actor thinking about aging in general and, more specifically, what it means to him. Staged initially for the Adelaide Cabaret Festival in 2021, Alan Cumming Is Not Acting His Age was initially inspired by the actor's experience playing a grown-up sex symbol. In the nude.
"I did this play called Daddy off-Broadway, and I was playing the daddy character," Cumming says. "I had to be naked for long periods of time, and I was fascinated at the [then] age of 54 by the way my body was objectified as a man in this 50s. So that's how it started. I decided to do this cabaret show because it's something we're all doing, aging. I like having a theme to work around, then I choose songs accordingly."
Now 59 years old with silver hair, Cumming is still a fabulous fashion plate — at least judging from the looks he wears for his Peacock TV reality show The Traitors (the No. 1 most streamed nonscripted series across all platforms, according to Nielsen ratings). He's also an accomplished raconteur with two biographies under his belt — one about his harrowing childhood, Not My Father's Son, and Baggage, about a career that took him from Shakespeare to Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion and Spice World.
Cumming has stories to spare, and in Acting His Age, he explores all the crucial topics: sex, death and plastic surgery (or the lack thereof). Coming to the Moody Performance Hall on Friday, March 8, the show will blend Broadway standards with a Disney medley — a celebrity dish with personal musings on how to grow old(er) disgracefully.
"More hopefully, it's a positive thing; that's why I'm talking about it," he says. "We've decided something that's inevitable is the worst thing that can happen. It's a huge negative, but in other cultures, they see it as something of value. I'm really intrigued about challenging people about why we worship at the 'Temple of Youth.' I feel like it's a time when everyone has plastic surgery and does these insane things to their faces and bodies and take pills to make them thin. I have this joke that I'm going to be the last person on TV to never have Botox."
Youthful in both his flexibility and his spirit, Cumming may not keep track of the latest batch of Gen Z celebrities, but he does know what younger people are interested in via his co-ownership of a New York gay bar and nightclub in the East Village, Club Cumming.
Studio 59
"These pop-up Club Cumming nights started in my dressing room at Studio 54 when I did Cabaret for the second time in 2015," he says. "I would DJ — I'm a good host, and I like making people free, relaxed and uninhibited. Then I'd do these pop-up ones, then we got an actual venue. I thought it'd be so great to have a variety of performers because cabaret has been hijacked by musical theater. I think people think it means a girl with a feather boa singling 'Maybe This Time.' It's interesting when you put something out in the world, and it can be manifested. It's a lovely place and a really kind environment for people of all ages and genders."Opening a nightclub, writing books or even launching a fragrance (which the actor did in 2004) may seem like diversions off the path of traditional show business stardom, but Cumming has never been one to wait for the phone to ring from the powers to be. He'll create a one-man Macbeth or devise a dance/theatrical piece about Scottish national poet Robert Burns when he's not filming.
"I've always made a lot of my own work," he says. "It's nice to sort of feel you have a self-manufacturing machine. When I'm working, I like to be busy, and I've usually got a ton of things all sort of in the pipeline bubbling away in development. If they all happened at the same time, it'd be a nightmare!"
Next up is the rest of the tour, followed by a film with Brian Cox about estranged brothers, which is shooting this summer in Scotland. And after that, who knows? A second novel? Another reality show? Whatever inspiration strikes — and it usually does —Alan Cumming is likely to make his ideas become reality.
"I just keep my heart open to the world," he says. "If it's something I really want to do, I try and make it happen. I have some ideas for a good show that pairs cooking with fitness, how to make something, then do exercises in the middle like some push-ups or something — we'll just see what happens!"
Alan Cumming Is Not Acting His Age takes place at 7:30 and 9 p.m. Friday, March 8, at Moody Performance Hall, 2520 Flora St.
