Alan Cumming's 'SAPPY SONGS' to Headline Long Wharf Theatre's 2017 Gala

Long Wharf Theatre will present Tony Award-winning Broadway, film and television star Alan Cumming at its annual Gala on Monday, June 5.

The 2017 Gala begins at 6 p.m. with an elegant and sparkling cocktail reception featuring a sumptuous sampling of fine foods. This will be followed by Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs in Long Wharf's intimate 400-seat Claire Tow Stage in the C. Newton Schenck III Theatre. The evening's festivities conclude with a pop of bubbly to round out a mouthwateringly delicious dessert reception.

For more information, or to reserve tickets contact Kathy Cihi at kathy.cihi@longwharf.org or by calling 203-772-8234.

Alan premiered his critically acclaimed cabaret show, Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs, in 2015 at New York's legendary Cafe Carlyle. He has since toured the show extensively throughout the US, Canada and Australia, and soon the UK. In February 2016 he returned with the show to NYC and made his sold out, solo debut at Carnegie Hall, and released a live album of the same name.

"I had wanted to do my own show for a very long time, but I had been terrified at the prospect of singing without the veil of a character. Every now and then when I was very brave, or had been emotionally blackmailed, I would sing a song at a gala or an event as myself, and really was amazed by the connection I felt between me and the audience," Cumming said. "In 2009 I was asked to take part in the American Songbook Series at New York's Lincoln Center and I bit the bullet and said yes. I named the show I Bought A Blue Car Today, and in it I talked about my experiences coming to America and eventually deciding to become an American citizen. (I Bought A Blue Car Today was the sentence I had to write down in my naturalization test to prove my prowess of the English language!)."

I Bought a Blue Car Today was the first in Cumming's series of solo performances. In 2012 Cumming performed with Liza Minnelli at Town Hall in New York City. A live album, Liza and Alan at Town Hall, is soon to be released. He then developed a new show titled Alan Cumming: Uncut, which was performed in New York, Pennsylvania, New Orleans, Ft. Lauderdale and San Francisco.

In 2015 he was asked to develop a new concert for a two-week run at New York's famed Café Carlyle, and decided to make this show his most personal and intimate to date. Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs premiered on Tuesday, June 2nd 2015 at the Café Carlyle to ecstatic reviews, and has since wowed, and continues to wow, audiences all across America, Canada and Australia.

For more information, visit longwharf.org or call 203-787-4282.

Alan Cumming is an actor and activist beyond eclectic and according to the New York Times 'a bawdy countercultural sprite'; Time Magazine named him one of the most fun people in show business; He plays political maverick Eli Gold on CBS's "The Good Wife", for which he received Golden Globe, Emmy, SAG and Satellite award nominations and earlier this year finished his Tony Award-winning role of the Emcee in the Broadway musical Cabaret.

Alan's diverse career has found him performing at venues around the globe including the Sydney Opera House; making back to back films with Stanley Kubrick and The Spice Girls; directing and starring in a musical condom commercial; creating voices of a Smurf, a goat and Hitler; entering upside down and suspended by his ankles in a Greek tragedy (in the National Theatre of Scotland's The Bacchae); and recording an award-winning album of songs (plus a dance remix). Alan is also Host of PBS's Masterpiece Mystery and appears opposite Lisa Kudrow in Showtime's "Web Therapy." Alan has written for The NY Times, Newsweek, Harpers Bazaar, Out, Globe and Mail, and two books; Tommy's Tale and his NY Times Best Selling memoir, Not My Father's Son.

A tireless champion for LGBT civil rights and HIV/AIDS, Alan serves on the Board of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and works closely with amfAR, The Trevor Project and the Ali Forney Center to name but a few. In 2009, Alan was made an OBE in the Queen's Honors List and by his homeland, Scotland, for which he was a vocal supporter of the YES for independence campaign, he has been awarded the Great Scot and Icon of Scotland awards, as well as recently having his portrait unveiled at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.