Theatre News

Alan Cumming Is Not Acting His Age announces touring dates

The new solo show will be heading to London, Manchester and Glasgow next year

Alan Cumming
Alan Cumming, © Dan Wooller for WhatsOnStage

Olivier and Tony Award winner Alan Cumming will be bringing his new solo show to stages across the country next January.

Entitled Alan Cumming Is Not Acting His Age, the piece is set to cover “all the bases: sex, death and bacchanalia” and will incorporate songs from Kander and Ebb to contemporary favourites and even a self-penned paean against plastic surgery. Other topics include quality of life lessons from his dog, an account of the time the mum from The Brady Bunch asked him to punch her, and, of course, addressing the question: What exactly is acting your age?

Cumming commented: “I’m constantly told, even now in my sixth decade, that I am child-like or puckish, and yet at the same time I’m also called a silver fox and a daddy. I think we all get really mixed messages about ageing. We’re told to worship at the fountain of youth, to do everything we can to our bodies and our minds to stay young, yet then we bandy around pejoratives like ‘grow up’ or ‘act your age’, even that we’re ‘mutton dressed as lamb’. I feel I’m still at an age where I can dance till dawn but also be able to dole out some wisdom to my fellow revellers! Wisdom is just being able to recognize the repeating patterns that emerge as you get older, and maybe deciding to react to them differently. It’s just the same show with different costumes.”

Presented by AEG and Fourth Wall Live, the one-man show will play at London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane (15 and 16 January), Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall (18 January) and Glasgow’s SEC Armadillo (20 January), with tickets going on sale this Friday, 28 July at 10am.

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