Alan Cumming Bringing One-Man ‘Macbeth’ to Broadway

Alan Cumming will play all three witches, Lady Macbeth and that Shakespearean crown grabber

Alan Cumming is headed back to Broadway to star in "Macbeth."

Getty ImagesThe gimmick in this production of the so-called "Scottish play," is that "The Good Wife" star won't just be playing the titular crown-grabber, he will perform all the parts — from the three witches to Lacy Macbeth. To explain the multiple personalities being dramatized on stage, this version of William Shakespeare's play will be set in a psychiatric unit with Cumming playing a patient who re-enacts the tale of bloody palace intrigue.

The show's producers said it will have only a limited, 73-performance run at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, from April 7 to June 30.

Tony Award winner John Tiffany ("Once") and Andrew Goldberg ("The Bomb-itty of Errors") will direct.

Cumming tried out his idiosyncratic take on the material at the National Theatre of Scotland and the Lincoln Center Festival.

“Performing Macbeth last year was the most challenging and fulfilling experience of my career by far, and so I am both honored and daunted to do it again in my adopted hometown of New York City,” the actor said in a statement.

Reviews for the overall production were mixed when it debuted in New York last summer, but Cumming's bravura work earned strong notices.

"The performance has a smooth virtuosity that plays down the gimmickry and illuminates how Macbeth’s mind is a tangled nest of both noble and evil impulses," Charles Isherwood wrote in the New York Times.

Cumming won a Tony for his performance as the Emcee in "Cabaret" (1998) and also appeared on Broadway in revivals of "The Threepenny Opera" (2006) and "Design for Living" (2001).

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