I bought a blue car today ***

Vaudeville Theatre, until 6 September 2009

Alan Cumming does a decent job with his one man show.

It’s a mixture of him talking and singing, (very) loosely based on his last ten years in America.

His conversation between the songs was charismatic and entertaining, and a story about Cabaret was particularly engaging. Cumming was performing as Emcee in the musical (presumably dressed in leather or not very much at all) and asked a grandfatherly man up on stage to dance with him. The crowd went wild. When Cumming asked the man’s name, the reply was “Walter Cronkite”, the broadcast journalist named as “the most trusted man in America”.

However, Cumming seemed a bit lost on the stage of the Vaudeville when singing, stripped of any set and any real choreography or ensemble, and his voice doesn’t have enough wow-factor to fully compensate. The selection of songs for the most part is a bit schmaltzy. And when he starts singing he loses some of his natural charisma and falls back on the conventions of musical theatre: making of fists, wide sparkly eyes, wry smiles.

When he goes into a song from Cabaret, Mein Herr, it’s an entirely different matter. This is dark, mischievous and erotic and you can see quite easily how he racked up a string of awards in the UK and US with his performance in the Donmar’s production. He really excels here: his natural charisma re-emerges and he has the chance to do a bit of proper acting.

And the comic songs were a real treat. Taylor, the Latte Boy was sweet and funny, and the encore song that had been written for a 96 year old grandmother was hilarious: “You’re fucking beautiful”, with more “fucks” than a randy band of rabbits.

There was something else undermining the performance though. The band members were undeniably talented and their placement on stage created a nice sense of intimacy. However, I suspect that Cumming was unaware that one of the band members was pissing about for large parts of the performance.

Mate, you’re lit up on stage with a whole audience looking at you! He sat there looking beyond bored, slumping over his instrument, and trying to catch the attention of another musician sat next to him. He was mouthing words and a couple of times, and he even looked like he was playing scissors, paper, stone or some other sort of hand gestures.

Cumming made a big deal about creating bonhomie with his band, introducing them all at the start, and making jokes about their relative youth. Either this musician didn’t care or there was some politics going on, but it really jarred with Cumming’s attempts to create intimacy and distracted from the performance.

It was an enjoyable show. It would have been better with improved choreography, changing some of the musical numbers for funnier ones, a bit more of the Cabaret raunch, and some stern words to the band.