“It’s going to be just what it says on the poster,” Alan Cumming says, introducing his set, “only minus the exclamation mark.” That, apparently, was the marketing department’s idea.
But Cumming, who is clearly enjoying his Scottish homecoming at the Edinburgh international festival, is wrong. There is plenty to exclaim about in this unashamedly sentimental and old-fashioned showbiz evening, which transforms the Hub into “Club Cumming”, complete with a pink neon sign and waiters taking the drinks orders.
The last time Cumming appeared at the festival, in 2007, he made a cheeky, bare-bottomed entrance in John Tiffany’s The Bacchae. Despite an anecdote about removing a tattoo of a lover’s name from his groin, this is a more sedate affair, as he channels the great concert performers of the past, including his friend Liza Minnelli. It’s just as revealing, however, as Cumming holds court like a naughty Puck intent on making mischief but who can’t help showing us a glimpse of his fragile, oft-broken heart.
He is accompanied by a fine three-piece band in a set that developed out of after-show sessions in his dressing room during his Broadway run in Cabaret. Yes, he is performing, just as he was acting when he played Eli Gold in The Good Wife. But despite Cumming’s showmanship, it’s a performance that feels unaffectedly honest – not least in the choice of songs, many of which fall into the guilty pleasure category. He begins with Miley’s Cyrus’s The Climb, works in a genuinely affecting rendition of Adele’s Someone Like You and plays to the crowd with Mother Glasgow. He’s taken his judgment hat off and urges us to do the same.
It’s hard not to comply, particularly when he talks about his relationship with his abusive father, detailed in his book Not My Father’s Son, and delivers a blistering account of Rufus Wainwright’s Dinner at Eight. He tells us about his maternal grandfather, who had post-traumatic stress disorder and died playing Russian roulette, before dedicating Billy Joel’s Vietnam song, Goodnight Saigon, to him.
In cheekier mode, Cumming offers his own advertising jingle for a brand of condoms. The mere presence of this show at Edinburgh reflects how much more all-embracing and less po-faced the festival has become, particularly under Fergus Linehan, whose eclectic taste is livening things up. Cumming does the same when he juxtaposes Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill with Katy Perry, or during a mash-up of music from Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods and Company wittily points out that Stephen Sondheim is quite brilliant at stealing his own material.
Cumming also pokes fun at the deceitful cabaret convention of the final song followed by the pre-planned encore, but when the moment arrives he delivers exactly what we want. It’s a show that revels in its own knowingness. And because Cumming knows we know, it’s all the more enjoyable.
• At the Hub, Edinburgh, until 27 August. Box office: 0131-473 2000.
