Review: ALAN CUMMING IS NOT ACTING HIS AGE delights Sanders Theatre audience

In his eponymous show “Alan Cumming Is Not Acting His Age,” the performer definitely lives up to the title.

Indeed, his customary sly smile was firmly in place when he took the stage of Sanders Theatre in Cambridge for his recent Celebrity Series of Boston appearance – opening the show with “But Alive” from “Applause,” the 1970 Tony Award winner for Best Musical.

With music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Lee Adams, and a Lauren Bacall pedigree, the showtune provided Cumming with the perfect opener, especially with lyrics like “I feel twitchy and bitchy and manic, Calm and collected and choking with panic, But alive, but alive, but alive!”

And twitchy, bitchy, and alive he was throughout a 90-minute program that was rich with both well-chosen songs and well-delivered banter.

As the actor and singer explained, “I think we all get really mixed messages about aging. 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,’ all while we’re mutton dressed as lamb.”

With no sheep wool anywhere in sight, at least not on stage, Cumming wore a trim-fit black and white striped suit and dispensed with the jacket mid-show, as he often does, for a bare-armed look that proved he is not only not acting his age, the 59-year-old doesn’t look it either.

In one of his many devilish asides, Cumming, who gave two Broadway performances of this show earlier this month at Studio 54, said, “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.”

And as far as his age goes, he doesn’t sound it either, as he proves when putting his Scottish baritone to bountiful use on a range of Broadway, pop, rock, and Disney music, with first-rate accompaniment by a quartet that included musical director and pianist James Harvey, Augie Haas on trumpet, Chris Jago on drums, and Eleanor Norton on cello.

One of the evening’s numerous musical highlights came when Cumming imbued the Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller standard “Is That All There Is?” – a ballad of disillusionment long singularly associated with Peggy Lee – with his own custom blend of nuance.

Other splendid takes included Rupert Holmes’s “Everything,” sung by Barbra Streisand in the 1976 version of “A Star is Born,” Billy Joel’s “Where’s the Orchestra?” and two songs from Disney animated features, “Part of Your World,” by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, from 1989’s “The Little Mermaid,” and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “How Far I’ll Go” from 2016’s “Moana.”

Between the songs, Cumming name-dropped – warmly, but with a wink – everyone from his onetime Tony Awards co-host Kristin Chenoweth to Paul McCartney, Emma Stone, Billie Jean King, and late luminaries like Carol Channing, Florence Henderson, and his fellow Scotsman Sean Connery.

In what was perhaps the evening’s most moving number, Cumming revisited his greatest Broadway success to date, the 1998 revival of “Cabaret,” which won him the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical for his portrayal of the Emcee, with a stunningly powerful rendition of John Kander and Fred Ebb’s “Maybe This Time.” It may be Sally Bowles’ song in the show, but in Cambridge, Cumming owned it.

He was also splendid on Mack David, Maurice Jarre, and Mike Curb’s “It Was a Good Time” – made famous by Liza Minnelli in her 1972 concert film, “Liza with a Z!” – and his wistful closer, “Falling in Love Again,” the Marlene Dietrich classic written by Friedrich Hollander.

Photo caption: Alan Cumming recently performed his latest show, “Alan Cumming Is Not Acting His Age,” at Sanders Theatre in Memorial Hall at Harvard. Photo by Robert Torres/Celebrity Series of Boston.

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