As he turns 50, Lorna Irvine looks back on Alan Cumming's illustrious career so far.
From a campy Scottish sitcom to ''the Scottish play'', a Tony award-winning turn in Cabaret to a hit TV courtroom drama, Alan Cumming has taken more creative risks than most. Not bad for a wee chap from the wilds of Perthshire.
Cumming cut his teeth in theatre productions at the Citz before a not-terrifically memorable turn in a shed in godawful 'Heeghland' soap opera Take The High Road, a programme so dull the cast were always in danger of being upstaged by livestock at any given moment. It was only as one half of a kitsch double act with Forbes Masson, Victor and Barry, who lampooned Glaswegian thesps, that the public started to sit up and take notice. They were a fully-formed cabaret act, little extensions of themselves but much smugger, really. Their songs, such as Kelvinside Man and Marks and Spencers are the catty stuff of legend, filled with self-aware bon mots on the pretentious ac-tors they encountered on their way up.
This success resulted in their own 1994 sitcom, as Steve McCracken and Sebastian Flight (Brideshead reference, anyone?) the equally subtle and understated The High Life. Set on a budget airline, the inept Air Scotia and featuring Siobhan Redmond as uber-bitch Shona Spurtle, its general idiocy was refreshing and resonated with me, full of campy Scottish humour and catchphrases (''deeeeaaaarrriiiieeeee meeeeeeee!") at a time when Scottish comedy was fairly moribund--either the much overlooked Absolutely, Rab C Nesbitt or interminable re-runs of Scotch and Wry and Stanley Baxter.
It was in slightly twee films that he initially made his mark on the big screen, such as the slightly drippy Mr Elton in Emma and the incredibly creepy Sean Walsh in Circle Of Friends, but Shakespeare adaptations such as Titus and The Tempest cemented his debt to treading the Bards, if you will--more of which, later. But his stage role as the sinister cypher Emcee in the Broadway production of Cabaret usurped Joel Grey's iconic movie version, showcasing his fine singing voice and off-kilter dark sexuality, earning him a Tony in 1998. Subversive family film roles followed, notably as sleazy record company boss Wyatt Frame in a remake of Josie and the Pussycats, where American teens are brainwashed into buying crap music and tooth-rotting branded junk food and drinks, and as Sandy Frank in the gleefully campy Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, but meatier fare like The Anniversary Party has been sadly overlooked, relegated to cult status.
So, risks. A mischievously sexy novel about eschewing adult responsibility? Check, with the fab, outrageously filthy Tommy's Tale. The antithesis of this, Not My Father's Son, his defiantly unsentimental account of his father's abuse? Check. His own aftershave, complete with cheeky ad campaign- Cumming, and, OH YEAH, The Second Cumming? Check. A one man show called I Bought A Blue Car Today, which was semi-autobiographical, also did the trick for many theatre goers, a nice antidote to facile, seemingly ubiquitous jukebox musicals, and a decadent re-staging of The Bacchae was a good fit for Cumming's darker side.
But for so many of my generation, it was seeing his (almost) one-man Macbeth in John Tiffany and Andrew Goldberg's production at the Tramway in 2012 that proved indelible- he was incredible, with few props, in a stark mental asylum setting with various camera angles revealing a vulnerable man's increasingly fragmented mental state. Beautiful and chilling. American fans relish the unscrupulous, uptight Eli Gold in excellent courtroom drama The Good Wife, as well they should--but for me the Scottish Play's the thing, with apologies to you ken who.
I love you Alan, fifty years old, still a naughty, sexy wee pixie and a force of nature. Where he goes next is anyone's guess, but that's all part of his charm.
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