Alan Cumming and Ari Shapiro promise to hold nothing back in thoughtful but naughty cabaret
What do you get when an iconic actor teams up with an accomplished journalist to create an original cabaret? A show with a good lede.
“The first thing we say is really filthy,” teased Alan Cumming in an interview. The Tony, Olivier, and Emmy Award-winning performer is one half of Och and Oy! A Considered Cabaret, which Brampton On Stage will present at The Rose on March 21. His co-conspirator is Ari Shapiro, one of the hosts of NPR’s radio program All Things Considered and its associated podcast Consider This. In Och and Oy!, which premiered in 2019, Shapiro and Cumming intersperse classic songs with stories from their rollicking lives — and from their first moment on stage, they hold nothing back.
“I always say that cabaret is like a smorgasbord,” said Cumming. “You can turn on a sixpence. [It’s about] shocking you with the extremes of what might happen. I think we certainly live up to that.” Cumming should know: his name has been inextricably linked with the art form since he won a Tony Award for his performance as the louche emcee of a Weimar-era nightclub in the 1998 Broadway revival of Cabaret the musical.
In the same interview, Ari Shapiro explained what makes Och and Oy! a “considered cabaret.” “The concept that we started with for the show was that it would have the kind of deep, thoughtful, probing conversations that you might get from NPR,” he said, “along with the slightly bawdy, entertaining song and dance numbers that you would expect from an Alan Cumming show, and these would combine to create something delightful and original.”
Delightful, original, and considered — but not too considered. “I think when people see that I’m coming to [do] a show, they’re like, ‘Oh, God! I don’t want to go to a concert hall and hear about the news,’” said Shapiro. “I feel like I have to explicitly say, ‘this is a news-free zone.’”
If there’s an overarching theme to the evening, it’s “about being queer men,” said Cumming. “We’re an odd couple [onstage], and the show is about how much more we have in common than you might think. One of the things we have in common is our queerness, and being men of a certain age, and just how we manoeuvre our relationships and our desires in our lives. It’s refreshing, and slightly subversive, for two older [queer] men — ”
“I beg your pardon?” joked Shapiro.
“One!” replied Cumming. “No, [but for] two older men to be talking about that in a public way.”
Cumming and Shapiro have no shortage of stories to share: Each man is a multihyphenate in his own right. Both are authors of bestselling memoirs. Shapiro hosted the seventh season of reality TV show The Mole in 2024, while Cumming has won critical acclaim — and two Emmys — for his camptastic turn hosting The Traitors US. Outside of Och and Oy!, Shapiro regularly appears onstage as a guest singer with the band Pink Martini, while Cumming co-owns a permanent cabaret space in New York’s East Village, cheekily named Club Cumming. A proud Scotsman, he became the artistic director of Pitlochry Festival Theatre in Highland Perthshire this past January.
“Being able to use different muscle groups, different creative skills, different parts of my brain, keeps me nimble and challenged and stimulated,” said Shapiro. “I think that’s one of the reasons Alan and I get along so well: if we’re not being challenged, and we’re not a little bit afraid, then we get restless.”
Shapiro met Cumming in 2014 through a mutual friend, who took the journalist to the actor’s dressing room — “the original Club Cumming,” said Shapiro — during a remount of Cabaret at Studio 54. (The dressing room’s history has since been immortalized with a neon sign outside its window.)
“We started doing events together onstage,” Shapiro said. “We did [an onstage interview] for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots at a museum in Washington, DC. As we were walking off stage, Alan turned to me and said, ‘We have such a good rapport. We should make a show together.’ I said, ‘Don’t joke about that, because I will absolutely take you up on it.’”
Cumming, for his part, said his experience of being interviewed by Shapiro was what inspired him to make the offer. “Ari actually challenges and says, ‘Well, what do you mean by that?’” said Cumming. “I really love a conversation where it’s not just fluff. He’s engaged in a way that I like to be engaged, and we [make] a good kind of oddball combo.”
That combo is actually a trio: both artists stressed how much Och and Oy! depends on their third collaborator, musical director Henry Koperski. “[He’s] sweetness and light and joy and beauty and talent,” praised Shapiro. “Being able to go on adventures with Alan and Henry is one of the best parts of doing this show.”
This current adventure will take the collaborators to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in addition to Ontario. “I’m so excited to go to bits of Canada that I’ve never been to,” said Cumming. “To go to Nova Scotia, and also to go to Fredericton.”
“I’m most excited about going to Nova Scotia,” said Cumming, “because it is, of course, the New Scotland. I have a primal connection to it.”
Och and Oy! A Considered Cabaret plays at The Rose on March 21, 2025. Tickets are available here.
Nathaniel Hanula-James
Nathaniel Hanula-James is a multidisciplinary theatre artist who has worked across Canada as a dramaturg, playwright, performer, and administrator.
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