Alan Cumming has just finished performing a radical re-imagining of Macbeth, single handedly! to sell out audiences on Broadway’s Ethel Barrymore Theatre (of Theater in the American vernacular).

He won the Olivier Award, playing the maniac in Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist in 1996 and the Tony Award for his role as the MC in the Broadway production of Cabaret seven years later. Alan has also been nominated for two Emmys and two Screen Actor’s Guild Awards.

In this National Theatre of Scotland production the 11th Century ‘Thane of Cawdor’s’ murderous ambition and corrosive guilt is cleverly transferred to a chilly chamber of a mental institution where a CCTV camera captures the patient’s every move as he is habited in turn by each of the characters from ‘the Scottish play’. In two hours with no intermission he performs “one power grab, and 16 major roles,” as one reviewer put it. “Cumming’s delivery swiftly shifts characters with stunning clarity.”

Alan signed my sketch yesterday at a preview screening of his latest film Any Day Now at Piccadilly Vue Apollo Cinema in London