Home-Cumming for Alan as he returns to Fringe two decades on

BROADWAY star Alan Cumming is to return to the Edinburgh Fringe with his solo cabaret act two decades after the festival show that launched him on the road to stardom.

• The Edinburgh Fringe helped launch Alan Cumming to international stardom

The Scottish actor will fly to Edinburgh to appear for just three nights between filming for the US television series The Good Wife.

His appearance in a midnight version of his cabaret show I Bought a Blue Car Today is seen as a major coup for the Assembly venue as part of its 30th anniversary celebrations this year.

In the late 1980s, Cumming scored a cult hit with his musical comedy double act, Victor and Barry, co-starring Forbes Masson. The pair went on to write and star in the Scottish sitcom The High Life.

"He has an enormous history with the Fringe and performed with us many times in the late 1980s," said Assembly director William Burdett Coutts. "In terms of having someone to celebrate our 30th year, he's probably one of the biggest names. We were lucky to get the time."

I Bought a Blue Car Today tells the story of the Scots actor and his experiences of ten years living in America, interspersed with favourite songs.

Cumming, who lives in New York in a civil partnership with graphic artist Grant Shaffer, has staged the show in the US and brought it to London for just one week last year.

He returned to Scotland to star in the National Theatre of Scotland's lavish 2008 production of The Bacchae in the Edinburgh International Festival. But it is many years since he appeared on the Fringe, Assembly staff said.

The Perthshire-born actor, who trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, is one of the biggest names in Scottish theatre and film. He has toured in stage productions worldwide, and his film roles include parts in the James Bond and X-Men series. He won a Tony award, the New York stage's biggest honour, for his role as the Emcee in the musical Cabaret in 1998.

I Bought a Blue Car Today is described as a "musical journey" through the colourful life of an actor who was once married to a fellow drama student but "outed" himself as a bisexual in 1998. He uses musical material that has ranged from Frank Sinatra to Cyndi Lauper.

Cumming has released an album with tracks from the show, including Mein Herr from Cabaret, borrowed from the performance that made his name on both sides of the Atlantic.

The title of the two-hour show comes from one of the sample phrases that people are asked to write down when applying for US citizenship. It will play at the Assembly Halls on the Mound.

In the US, the show has featured Cumming's music director Lance Horne on piano and Yair Evnine on cello.

A New York Times reviewer said the show "exudes the fabulousness of a brash showbiz kid". A UK writer said it "conjures what it feels like to be a maverick sprite from Perthshire facing all the temptations and stresses the Big Apple offers".

THE HIGH LIFE

IN THE Victor and Barry show, Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson played the camp Scottish founder members of the Kelvinside Young People's Amateur Dramatic Art Society.

The show was nominated for a Perrier award, went on to tour Australia and is seen as a launching pad for Cumming's career.

In the cabaret show, they played cravat-wearing Victor and Barry, characters they developed further in Scottish sitcom The High Life, set in a cheap airline.

It featured songs such as Kelvinside Men, from Glasgow's West End, and Marks & Spencers", a song about their favourite shop, as well as tributes to West Side Story and the Proclaimers.