Alan Cumming and Ari Shapiro perform their live stage show, Och & Oy: A Considered Cabaret.Tyler Phinney/Supplied
A public radio broadcaster and a multihyphenate TV host walk into a bar. Then what?
They create a touring stage show, obviously.
The origins of Ari Shapiro and Alan Cumming’s friendship may sound like the punchline to a joke about the cultural elites of New York and Washington, but the men became fast friends when they met in 2014 through a mutual acquaintance, in Cumming’s Cabaret dressing room on Broadway. (“Club Cumming,” Shapiro calls it.)
For years, Shapiro, host of NPR’s All Things Considered, and Cumming, star of stage and screen and host of TV’s The Traitors, joked about doing something onstage together. But when that dream became a real goal, Och & Oy: A Considered Cabaret developed quite quickly, the duo say. Over innumerable glasses of red wine, Shapiro and Cumming mapped out the show, putting it together in their living rooms as they came to realize just how much they had in common despite their vastly different professional backgrounds.
This month, Och & Oy travels to Canada, with planned stops in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Ontario. The Globe and Mail sat down with Cumming and Shapiro to discuss the show, as well as a controversial line in Cabaret and the importance of a strong national broadcaster.
How did you decide to create a show together?
Ari Shapiro: What actually amazed me about the process was how quickly and easily it came together – it was barely a decision at all. We spent one weekend at Alan’s home in New York trying to figure out what the show could be, and then another at my home in Washington, D.C. with our musical director. The next time we saw each other was to perform the show for the first time in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
You two come from very different backgrounds – theatre and broadcasting. Was it hard to balance those approaches to storytelling in creating Och & Oy?
Alan Cumming: Well, that’s what the show is about, actually. It’s about the fact that we seem pretty different, but we’re not, really, and we’ve got much more in common than you might imagine. Ari has a much huger knowledge of musical theatre than I expected, and I have some experience of journalism. So that’s sort of peppered throughout the show, these little things that make us more similar than you’d think.
AS: It’s light and fun, though, not at all dogmatic or heavy-handed. Ultimately, the show is about finding commonality and connecting with people who might seem different from you. And we try to do that with a light touch.
What’s the biggest commonality you found in creating the show?
AC: We both love red wine.
AS: And vodka, sometimes.
Cumming, left, star of stage and screen, and Shapiro, host of NPR’s All Things Considered, say the show came together quickly after the pair often joked about doing something onstage together.JJ Geiger/Supplied
Ari, as the host of All Things Considered on NPR, you have a unique perspective of our public broadcaster’s southern counterpart. In Canada, the CBC has become a central political question – to defund or not to defund? – and I’m curious how you see public radio existing within a balanced media diet.
AS: There’s something precious about a news organization that’s dedicated to public service, where the goal isn’t profit or advertising. The goal is to help people participate in a democracy by being informed citizens. That’s something that NPR and the CBC have in common.
If public media can encourage a sense of active, constructive participation in society, that’s an incredibly valuable part of a functioning democracy.
Alan, there’s a song in the second act of Cabaret that marks a crucial, poisonous turning point in the show, when the rise of fascism in Nazi Germany becomes impossible to ignore. Recently, the Broadway production of Cabaret has stopped mid-show due to people laughing at a joke about Jews in pre-World War Two Berlin. I’m curious whether you’ve been following that discourse, having won your first Tony Award for your portrayal of the Emcee in 1998. Have you been surprised by how audiences have reacted to If You Could See Her?
AC: There’s always been some nervous laughter at that point in the show. But that’s changing now, from what I understand. It’s not nervous laughter any more, it’s more vindicated, crueller.
Cabaret is such a brilliant piece that has always been relevant and always been prescient. There’s always going to be something in the world going on that resonates with what’s in the show. Right now, that resonance is particularly strong in the heart of the United States. The fact that fascism persists in our lives and in our cultures is the very reason we need art in the world – to, as Shakespeare said, hold a mirror up to nature.
You’re both quite public people. How did you reckon with your respective personas or the parasocial relationships your fans might have with you, in constructing Och & Oy?
AC: We totally play with those preconceptions people might already have of us.
AS: I have a lot of fun with that, actually. The person I am on NPR is the real me, but on NPR, I don’t get to swear or make suggestive jokes. People might think of me as this buttoned-up public radio person, which makes doing the show even more fun.
Sure, it’s a cliché to say we live in a world of isolation and division. But by choosing to go to a live show people are opting into a collective experience. It’s our job to make that experience meaningful.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
