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Alan Cumming To Star In One-Man <em>Macbeth</em>
By
Jamie Feldmar
Published Nov 29, 2011
Modified Nov 29, 2011
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Alan Cumming's website
By
Jamie Feldmar
Published Nov 29, 2011
Modified Nov 29, 2011
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Alan Cumming, Scottish native and Shakespeare aficionado, is going back to his roots next year in a big way, announcing that he's undertaking a one-man production of Macbeth in which he will play all the parts. Double, double toil and trouble for the original "Scottish play," indeed!
Cumming will debut the play in Scotland this summer before moving to Lincoln Center for a sure-to-sell-out limited engagement. "I have been obsessed with the play all my life," he said in a recent interview. "It was the first Shakespeare I was in... Speaking to [co-director] John Tiffany in New York earlier this year, I had this idea I wanted to swap the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, because there are so many things about gender, I thought it would be a really exciting idea to flip that. So we did this reading like that, in New York, and [co-director] Andy Goldberg had this idea I should just play all the parts."
We have little doubt that the fantastically talented (and amusingly flamboyant) Cummings has the chops to pull this off, but the big question is: how many costume changes can one man endure? Find out for yourself when the show comes to town July 5th through July 14th as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. And in case you've never had the chance to catch Cumming's native Scottish accent, here he is discussing how he came to love Shakespeare as a wee lad.
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