The National Theatre of Scotland's production of Macbeth, featuring a tour-de-force performance by Alan Cumming is being presented on Broadway by a leading US theatre producer.
The production premiered at Tramway, Glasgow in June 2012 and then at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York. Ken Davenport, an independent New York producer will be presenting the production for 73 performances from 7 April 2013.
Neil Murray, Executive Producer at the National Theatre of Scotland said: “We are thrilled that a leading New York commercial producer is taking on our acclaimed production of Macbeth, featuring Alan Cumming’s stunning performance. We believe that this will be the first time that Shakespeare’s Scottish play will have been performed by a Scottish actor and a Scottish company on Broadway.”
Olivier and Tony award-winner Alan Cumming takes on all of Shakespeare’s characters, in a bold re-imagining of Shakespeare’s chilling tale of desire, ambition, and the supernatural. The production is set in a psychiatric unit and centres on a patient who is reliving the story of Macbeth. CCTV cameras watch the patient’s every move and the white clinical walls of the unit come to life in a visually stunning multi-media theatrical experience, featuring a central virtuoso performance.
Alan Cumming was reunited with the National Theatre of Scotland’s John Tiffany to offer this radical new interpretation of “the Scottish play”. Macbeth is directed by John Tiffany (Once-currently on Broadway and Black Watch) and Andrew Goldberg (The Bomb-itty of Errors).
This will mark the Company’s eighth run in New York and the National Theatre of Scotland’s second on Broadway, following presentations of The Wolves in the Walls at the New Victory Theater, three runs of Black Watch and Beautiful Burnout at St Ann’s Warehouse, and The Bacchae and Macbeth at the Lincoln Center Festival.
John Tiffany and Alan Cumming originally worked together on Euripides’ The Bacchae which took the Edinburgh International Festival by storm in 2007 and subsequently toured in 2008 to Aberdeen, Inverness and New York. Andy Goldberg was Staff Director on Black Watch in New York, when he and John Tiffany first started collaborating creatively. It was here in New York where Andy Goldberg, John Tiffany and Alan Cumming first came up with the idea of this show.
John Tiffany’s production of Once is currently playing on Broadway, which won 8 Tony Awards last year, including Best Musical and Best Direction of a Musical. Once opens in London’s West End later this year. His productions for the National Theatre of Scotland include Enquirer (co-director)The Missing, Peter Pan, The House of Bernarda Alba, Transform Caithness: Hunter, Be Near Me, Nobody Will Ever Forgive Us, The Bacchae, Black Watch, Elizabeth Gordon Quinn and Home: Glasgow. For Black Watch, John won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director, as well as a Critics’ Circle Award for Best Director, a Scotsman Fringe First, a Herald Angel and a Critics’ Award for Theatre in Scotland. John was a Radcliffe Fellow from Harvard University in 2010-11. Forthcoming productions for the National Theatre of Scotland include Let The Right One In in Dundee and Black Watch is touring again in Spring 2013.
Andrew Goldberg has directed classical works, new plays, and musicals all over the world. His most well known productions include The Bomb-itty of Errors, a hip-hop adaptation of The Comedy of Errors which premiered off-Broadway before being seen internationally, including the Edinburgh Fringe (Stage Award for best ensemble) followed by London’s West End; Daddy Cool, the Boney M musical, at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London; as well as Hair in Asbury Park, Romeo & Juliet for American Stage, Twelfth Night at LaMaMa, Fair Maid of the West at Pleasance, London. For over five years he was the Associate Artistic Director of The New Group. He is also the founder of The Shakespeare Gym, a laboratory for physical and vocal acting approaches to Shakespeare. He lives in New York City.
Alan Cumming has a transatlantic, award-winning stage career. He made his theatre debut as Malcolm in Michael Boyd's production of Macbeth at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow and his West End debut at the Royal Court Theatre in Conquest of the South Pole for which he received his first Olivier Award nomination. He has performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre where he won an Olivier Award for Accidental Death of An Anarchist. He was nominated for Olivier Awards for La Bete and Cabaret, and his Hamlet at the Donmar Warehouse in London won him a TMA Best Actor Award and a Shakespeare Globe nomination. In 1998, Cabaret opened on Broadway, for which he won many awards. He has continued to work on Broadway in The Threepenny Opera opposite Cyndi Lauper, Design For Living and off-Broadway in Jean Genet’s Elle (which he also adapted) and The Seagull, opposite Dianne Wiest. In 2006, he returned to the British stage in Martin Sherman’s Bent, and in 2007 appeared in the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of Euripides’ The Bacchae.
Cumming is currently appearing as Eli Gold on CBS' The Good Wife, for which he has received Emmy, SAG and Satellite award nominations. Over the last couple of years he has also: sung at venues around the globe including the Sydney Opera House; appeared in films opposite Helen Mirren, Cher, James Franco and Christina Aguilera; voiced a Smurf, a goat and Hitler; sparred with Dianne Wiest in Chekhov; directed and starred in a musical condom commercial; written articles for Newsweek, Harpers Bazaar and Out; recorded an award-winning album of songs and a dance remix; made three documentaries; released a second fragrance (naturally named Second Cumming); hosted PBS' Masterpiece Mystery as well as speaking out for LGBT equality and civil rights and going to Buckingham Palace to receive an OBE for all of the above. Time Magazine also called him one of the most fun people in show business.