Alan Cumming Brings 'Macbeth' to Broadway

NEW YORK -- Alan Cumming will join a distinguished line of actors to play Macbeth on Broadway. Also Lady Macbeth. Also Duncan, Banquo and everyone else.

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After earning critical acclaim at the National Theatre of Scotland and in a brief run at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York, Cumming will bring his innovative take on Shakespeare's Macbeth to the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in the spring.

Beginning previews April 7 for an April 21 opening, the show will play a strictly limited engagement of 73 performances, running through June 30. The production is co-directed by John Tiffany, who won a 2012 Tony Award for the musical Once, and Andrew Goldberg.

One of Shakespeare's bloodiest tragedies, the play has been reimagined as the feverish experience of a lone patient in a clinical psychiatric unit, watched by attendants over closed-circuit television and from an observation window as he relives the story. 

"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," said Cumming. 

"I'm also proud of the fact that the National Theatre of Scotland is directly funded by the Scottish government," he added. "I cannot think of a better way to trumpet Scotland and its commitment to the arts than being a Scotsman doing his National Theatre's production of the Scottish play on the Great White Way."

Cumming co-stars as Eli Gold on CBS' The Good Wife. He won a Tony Award in 1998 for lead actor in a musical for his role as the Master of Ceremonies opposite Natasha Richardson in Sam Mendes' production of Cabaret. His most recent Broadway appearance was in a 2006 revival of The Threepenny Opera.

The Broadway run of Macbeth is being produced by Ken Davenport (Godspell).