Second Cumming

Returning to perform in his native Scotland for the first time in 16 years, Alan Cumming tells Al Senter why he likes to get serious on stage.

Local god returns to his native heath, preaching a religion of unbridled pleasure seeking that results in public uproar. The plot of The Bacchae by Euripides? Or the biography of Alan Cumming? Or perhaps it’s a bit of both.

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the National Theatre of Scotland have joined forces to lure Cumming, 42, away from the bright lights of Broadway and the fleshpots of Hollywood to star as Dionysus in The Bacchae, the first time Cumming has trodden his native boards for 16 years.

In the action-packed interim, Cumming - his life and career - has been transformed. His sensational performance as the MC in Sam Mendes’ production of Cabaret electrified New York, as it had mesmerised the Donmar Warehouse, and New Yorkers adopted him as one of their own, closely followed by Tinseltown, eager to utilise such a blazing and individual talent. Cumming also became a chat show regular, his impish, camp humour the perfect ingredient for such fare.

Cumming appears to believe nothing succeeds like excess and yet, more so than most, he is a man of striking contradictions. He’s the urban Lord of Misrule who prefers the peace of his country retreat in upstate New York, he’s the prime time japester who is also the dedicated actor, the hedonist who is also the workaholic. And in the theatre at least, he is full of unexpected choices.

Last year he returned to the London stage to star in a revival of Martin Sherman’s Bent. Now he is preparing to take on Dionysus in David Greig’s version of Euripides’ ancient tragedy, opening at Edinburgh’s King’s Theatre before touring to Glasgow and the Lyric Hammersmith.

“Perhaps, because of the way I’m perceived, I should only be doing flippant comedies,” Cumming says.

“I’m very passionate about plays and because there’s such a commitment when you do theatre and you have to give so much of yourself, it becomes your whole life. I don’t really want to do something light in the theatre - the stage, for me, is where I want to be taxed. Film is much more transient. To do theatre you have to get into the mindset where you’re able to do something again and again.”

From across the Atlantic, Cumming has been closely watching first devolution take root and then the development of the National Theatre of Scotland, citing the appointment of Vicky Featherstone - “an Englishwoman” - as a sign of new confidence and lack of chippy Anglophobia. Following the inevitable juggling of dates, the NTS’ efforts to woo Cumming were finally rewarded. But why this particular project?

“The Bacchae is a great play and Dionysus is a great role. The play confounds people’s expectations, at least initially, by being so funny. I’m thinking of Dionysus as a kind of glam rock star returning to Thebes, his native city, after a world tour. He is this rock god, spreading a message of hedonism which Pentheus, the king, tries to oppose. The Greeks made their Gods in their own image, endowing them with human failings and characteristics. Everything seemed to have a God attached to it. When grapes were introduced to Greece from Persia, for instance, they needed a God and Dionysus got the job. And the message of the play is that you shouldn’t try to mess with the Gods or try to deny what they represent.”

Cumming is relaxed about the prospect of fans of the X-Men films or even those who fondly remember him and his one-time colleague Forbes Masson as the camp duo at the heart of cult airline sitcom The High Life, coming to The Bacchae, expecting similar antics.

“Surely most people understand actors play different parts and they can differentiate between them. When I was doing Bent in the West End, I noticed that most people waiting for me at the stage door had X-Men merchandise for me to sign rather than the Bent programme. Perhaps they’d already used it to dry their tears at the end of the play.

“If people who’ve caught me on chat shows or in the X-Men films come to the theatre and see a very different side of me, then that’s all the better.”

Had he not been cast in Cabaret, would Cumming still have ended up in America? He considers.

“I don’t know, perhaps. I was talking to my friend Pat O’Connor, the director, and he reminded me of something I’d forgotten.

“I happened to be out with him on my very first night in New York and I said to him this was where I was going to settle. Circumstances may have taken me to New York, but the city opened its arms to me.”

Prior to his move to America, Cumming had toured with a much-praised Hamlet and he was also attracting attention for his work in films such as Circle of Friends and GoldenEye. His stock was certainly rising, but not at the velocity with which his career was about to take off. Does he ever wonder what would have happened, had he stayed in the UK?

“When I was doing Bent, I was very struck by the way the young boys in the company would talk about what was happening at the National or the RSC, about who was playing what and who was directing. I’m sure much the same thing happens in New York, but it all seemed very parochial to me.

“I feel increasingly that you can only live your life on a need to know basis - I certainly can’t keep up with what’s happening in Hollywood - who’s in, who’s out, who’s up, who’s down - except they’re all blondes.

“As you get older, you get more chilled about things. There isn’t that anxiety about getting on and meeting all the right people.”

Would Cumming ever consider uprooting himself from New York and returning to live permanently in Scotland? It seems unlikely.

“It would be nice,” he says. “But, to be honest, I have my little place in upstate New York that is forever Scotland. And to an extent your friends become your family and you surround yourself with people and things that remind you of home.”

Cumming recently found time to go on a walking tour of the Great Wall of China in order to raise funds for Aids research. For the boy who grew up in the Perthshire countryside, a forester’s son, it was a pleasurable return to the great outdoors.

“It was quite hard work - tougher than I’d been expecting,” he admits. “But it was a great exercise, camping in tents, sitting in front of the fire at night. I love all that and it’s something which I can experience at my place in the country. The other night I sat on my trampoline in the garden and watched thousands of fire flies dance. It’s part of the mating ritual. Each of them has an individual light that is peculiar to them and which they use to attract a partner. It was as if the air were full of fairy lights - it was quite magical.”

Inevitably, Cumming hasn’t seen much of his country spread. He reels off his recent projects - playing the Scarecrow in the TV miniseries, The Tin Man, a sci-fi version of The Wizard of Oz, promoting the DVD of Sweet Land which he produced and in which he appeared, touring film festivals with Suffering Man’s Charity, which he directed, not forgetting The Road to Broadway, a documentary series he produced and is playing Heather Graham’s love interest in.

“I like to have several things on the go at once,” says Cumming, in what must be the understatement of the 2007 festival.

“I like to do things in a very focused way and then I stop. Like Dionysus, I then let go, but I’m just as focused on letting go. Very focused, indeed.”

* The Bacchae is at EIF@King’s, Edinburgh, August 11-18, Theatre Royal, Glasgow, August 28-September 1 and Lyric Hammersmith, London, September 5-22