Alan Cumming Parks His Car at Vaudeville, 1 Sep

Olivier Award winner Alan Cumming, who was recently appointed an OBE (See News, 15 June 2009), will return to the West End stage in September when he brings his one-man musical show Alan Cumming: I Bought a Blue Car Today to the Vaudeville Theatre.

Running for eight performances only, from the 2 to 6 September 2009 (preview 1 September), I Bought a Blue Car Today is billed as “a musical journey peppered with material by Frank Sinatra, Dory Previn, Kander & Ebb and Cyndi Lauper, to name only a few” and comes to London as part of an international tour which includes stops in Sydney and New York.

Cumming’s recent stage credits include headlining the West End revival of Martin Sherman’s Bent in 2006 and playing Dionysus in the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of The Bacchae at the Edinburgh International Festival and at London’s Lyric Hammersmith in 2007.

His early stage credits include extensive work at the Tron Theatre and Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum, and, in London, Conquest of the South Pole, La Bete, Hamlet and Accidental Death of an Anarchist, for which he won an Olivier for Comedy Performance of the Year. He’s best known by theatregoers for Sam Mendes’ 1998 Donmar Warehouse revival of Kander and Ebb’s Cabaret, which transferred to Broadway, where he won a Tony Award for his performance as the Kit Kat Klub’s emcee. Since then, his stage work in the US has included Design for Living, Elle and The Threepenny Opera. His film credits include Sweet Land, Spy Kids, X2, Nicholas Nickleby, Titus, Eyes Wide Shut, Emma, Circle of Friends, Annie and Ant Bully.

In I Bought a Blue Car Today, Cumming will be accompanied by his musical director, Emmy Award-winner Lance Horne. It’s produced in the West End by Neil Eckersley and Paul Spicer for Speckulation Entertainment.

Currently at the Vaudeville, the Almeida’s revival of Tom Kempinski’s Duet for One, starring Juliet Stevenson and Henry Goodman, finishes on 1 August 2009.