(Stephen Holden’s article appeared in The New York Times, 6/3; via Pam Green.)
I have admired Alan Cumming since first seeing him in the 1998 Broadway revival of “Cabaret.” Who was this exotic, androgynous provocateur and pansexual pied piper brazenly flirting with audience members without losing his composure? He was scary and irresistible.
Nothing, however, prepared me for the emotional firestorm that Mr. Cumming detonated at Tuesday’s opening-night performance of his nightclub show “Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs,” at Café Carlyle. “Have a hankie ready,” he advised early in the evening while flashing a subversive Mephistophelean grin whose message read: You know and I know that underneath our decorum, we’re all ravenous sexual beasts and hooray for that!