I just ended the run of a play. The last week was the usual blend of contemplation, nostalgia and hysteria. The phrase, "I can't believe the show is ending," was heard often these past couple of months. I wanted to say: Why not? Didn't you read the contract?
But this ain't my first time at the rodeo, and I've noticed how younger members of a cast tend to panic as the end draws nigh and they realize the theatrical family that has enveloped them for the past year, a family nearly always more accepting and fun and simpatico than their own, is about to break up and evaporate into the showbiz ether.
Of course it doesn't actually, necessarily. One of the comforts of getting older is the knowledge that good friendships last, even those that were brief. I once spent nine months in Los Angeles, surely the loneliest city on Earth, after having gone through a spell of being incredibly reliant on, even rather needy with, my friends back in London. And I worried my long absence would forever alter our allegiances. Of course, the second I was in their company again it was as though I'd never been away, and now, 20 years later, many of those years spent apart, it still feels the same.
So ending my final turn as the Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret on Broadway, as I did last Sunday, was something I thought I was pretty prepared for. I knew I would see again the people I had made real connections with. I was ready to have my evenings to myself again, to revisit a life that was not just a glorified schedule. My knees wouldn't miss doing a kickline eight times a week, nor would I pine for singing lyrics like "Beedlee deedlee dee," but I was sanguine and ready to say goodbye and move on to pastures new.
And then it hit me. I have played the Master of Ceremonies three times: first in a three-month run at the Donmar Warehouse in London in 1993, then on Broadway in 1998 and now this present run, both for a year. It has been a huge part of my life, of my career, of how I am identified and perhaps even defined. I've been asked often why I have kept returning to this role, and it's a hard thing to answer. I have been a very different person at each incarnation, yet there is something about it that has stayed constant and familiar. I think it's perhaps that the Emcee is just a more extreme version of me. I see the role as more of a stand-up comedy routine with some tragedy thrown into the second act, rather than an actual character. He is a theatrical showman, a sparkly manipulator, but also allows us to see his vulnerability, darkness and ultimate demise. I have played this part in my 20s, 30s, 40s and now my 50s and I will never play it again.
When I left the show 16 years ago, aged 34, I never dreamed I would return to the role. I remember feeling sad then at the ephemeral nature of my work, how I would never be as fit, would never dance as much, would never be as sexy again. And then one day the phone rang and I was asked to bring it back, and truly, one of the reasons I said yes was to see if I could actually still do it. Still dance my tits off and be a big sexpot on a Broadway stage every night! See, everyone! I'm 50 and fabulous! And while I'm not reneging on any of those feelings, I have to face the fact that this will not happen again. They will not ask me to do this in another 16 years.
I have said this to friends of late and they politely protest. "Oh come on, you could pull it off, Alan!" is the general response, to which I reply firmly, "No! I couldn't! I will be 66 years old. I couldn't do a kickline! I wouldn't be a sexy man-child, I'd be a dirty old man!" Then they look at me with horror as though this revelation is making them face their own mortality. Or perhaps it's the vision of me in my seventh decade trussed up in my opening-number harness costume, my wrinkly face caked with dripping pancake like Dirk Bogarde in Death in Venice.
So ending Cabaret has perhaps sparked a delayed reaction to my turning 50. To the shortcomings and decay of my body I have already begun to grapple with. And it's actually been a great boon. I leave this role at the top of my game. I have done the two things I think are the greatest achievement for any artist: I have provoked and entertained, and, to my utter pride, often at the same time.
And I still have the pair of boots I have worn in every performance on Broadway and they have become a telling metaphor. They're really worn out. Apparently the cobbler who sees them whenever they are brought in for him to shore up has taken to throwing his hands up in horror and asking, "Why doesn't he just get a new pair?!" They still get me through the show, though without the support they once did, or should. They're ready to retire and go up on a shelf and when I look up at them they'll remind me that wearing them changed my life.
I might even bring them down and wear them every now and then if I'm going for a deshabille, bohemian look, and they'll still pull it off. They've still got it. They'll always be sexy.
Alan Cumming is an actor and a writer. He is the author of the novelTommy's Tale and the autobiographyNot My Father's Son.