Alan Cumming sparks but fails to ignite in ‘Burn’
Welcome to Curtain Call, our mostly queer take on the latest openings on Broadway and beyond.Scotland’s national poet Robert Burns and contemporary actor Alan Cumming converge in Burn, a dance theater piece co-created with acclaimed director-choreographer Steven Hoggett.
The result is a decade-spanning dive into the poet’s trials and tribulations, from an impoverished childhood to multiple love affairs and a life-long struggle with what today’s researchers might diagnose as bipolar disorder.
If not familiar with Burns’ life or work, the result is a muddled and somewhat academic bio-dance, lifted off the page by Cumming’s magnetic performance and a stellar design team.Alan Cumming is known to theater audiences for his Tony-winning reimagining of the Master of Ceremonies in the 1998 revival of Cabaret and to TV fans for his long run as Eli Gold on The Good Wife and, more recently, the light-on-his-toes Mayor Aloysius Menlove on Apple TV+’s Schmigadoon!
But his love of theater and literature runs deep, and for years Cumming had wanted to perform in one more “dance heavy” play or musical, as noted in the program for Burn.Related: Is a world of musical numbers Utopia?
