Emmy & Tony Award winner Alan Cumming will lead the celebration for beloved songwriter John Kander's 98th birthday. A remarkable roster of Roundabout favorites will take the stage for a once-in-a-lifetime concert showcasing the life and career of the composer of such shows as Cabaret, Chicago, and Kiss of the Spider Woman.
For nearly five decades, John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb wrote the scores for 15 Broadway musicals. This one-night concert will reunite Roundabout Interim Artistic Director Scott Ellis, director and choreographer Susan Stroman, and playwright David Thompson, the creative team behind Kander and Ebb's And The World Goes 'Round and Steel Pier, to create a song-and-dance birthday salute to one of the brightest lights Broadway has ever known.
A longtime friend of Roundabout Theatre Company, Alan Cumming made his Tony-Award winning Broadway debut in Roundabout's 1998 revival of Kander & Ebb's Cabaret and returned to play the role to great acclaim in the 2014 revival.
Proceeds from Ring Them Bells: A Birthday Celebration for John Kander support Roundabout Theatre Company's many programs and initiatives, including Education at Roundabout.
Alan Cumming. Trailblazer, creative polymath, renaissance man, maverick, master of reinvention, beyond eclectic: Alan Cumming is all of these and more. His most recent adventures include winning two Emmys for hosting and producing the US Traitors, being named Artistic Director of Pitlochry Festival Theatre in his native Scotland, playing the lead in Brian Cox's directorial film debut Glenrothan, recording a single with Gaelic rapper Griogair Labhruidh , writing a book with his longtime collaborator Forbes Masson to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the creation of their cabaret alter-egos Victor and Barry, voicing an elderly woman with a pet crab in the Disney Kids series Robogobo and all the while touring with NPR's Ari Shapiro in their cabaret Och and Oy! as well as his solo show Uncut. He is the author of seven books including a New York Times #1 bestselling memoir, performs in concert regularly in halls around the world and co-owns his own, eponymous cabaret boite Club Cumming in New York City's East Village, a home for 'all ages, all genders, all colours, all sexualities, where kindness is all and anything could happen!' Perhaps not surprisingly, Time Magazine named him one of the three most fun people in show business (the others were Cher and Stanley Tucci!). Thirty years ago his Hamlet stormed the West End and he was hailed as 'an actor knocking at the door of greatness'. A quarter of a century ago he was a sensation as Cabaret's Master of Ceremonies in a production that forever changed the Broadway landscape . A decade ago his visceral, virtually one man Macbeth was a stunning, transatlantic coup de theatre. His screen work ranges from art house to blockbuster, cult to mainstream, but his performances are always indelible and some immortal: Mr Floop in Spy Kids, Eli in The Good Wife, Nightcrawler in X2: X Men United, Sebastian in The High Life, 'O' in Sex and the City, Boris in Goldeneye, King James in Doctor Who, Sandy Frink in Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, Mayor Menlove in Schmigadoon and himself on Broad City. The list of his collaborators over the years includes Liza Minnelli, Jeremy O. Harris, Jackie Chan, the Smurfs, David Bowie, The Simpsons, Robert Wilson, Stanley Kubrick, Jay Z, Bianca Del Rio, the Spice Girls, George Lucas, Terence Blanchard, KT Tunstall and not forgetting Dora the Explorer, Arthur and Elmo. He had a photo exhibition named Alan Cumming Snaps! and an award-winning fragrance named Cumming. He has played Dionysus, the Devil, God, the Pope and was shot by Herb Ritts for Vanity Fair as Pan. He recently played a 70-year-old woman. He has been a Lee Jeans model and on a stamp. He is a Tony and Olivier award winning theatre actor. He hosted the Tonys and was nominated for an Emmy for doing so. In fact he has been nominated for seven Emmys, winning two for his work as the host and producer of the US Traitors along with another New York Emmy, a Scottish BAFTA and a British Comedy Award. He is an Independent Spirit award-winning producer and National Board of Review winning director. He is a Grammy and multiple Golden Globe nominee. His portrait was hung in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. He has four honourary doctorates and over forty awards for being a humanitarian, but as he says, 'awards mean nothing'!
Scott Ellis (Director) is the Interim Artistic Director of Roundabout Theatre Company. Broadway credits include Pirates! The Penzance Musical (Spring 2025), Doubt A Parable, Take Me Out; Tootsie (2019 Tony Award nomination), Kiss Me, Kate; She Loves Me (2016 Tony Award nomination); On the Twentieth Century; You Can't Take It With You (Tony nomination); The Elephant Man; The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Tony nomination); Harvey; Curtains (Tony nomination); The Little Dog Laughed (Drama League Award nomination); Twelve Angry Men (Tony nomination); The Man Who Had All the Luck; The Rainmaker; 1776 (Drama Desk Award and Tony nominations); Picnic (Outer Critics Circle Award nomination); Company; A Month in the Country; and Steel Pier (Tony nomination). Off-Broadway credits include Dada Woof Papa Hot; The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin; Gruesome Playground Injuries; Streamers; Good Boys and True; Entertaining Mr. Sloane; Flora, the Red Menace (Drama Desk nomination); And the World Goes 'Round (Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards), and The Waverly Gallery. His television credits include: "Julia," "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," CBS' new show "East New York," "The Closer," "Weeds" (executive producer), "30 Rock," (Emmy Award nomination for Best Director), and "Modern Family."
Susan Stroman. A five-time Tony Award winning director and choreographer most known for Crazy For You, Contact, The Scottsboro Boys, and The Producers. Her work has been honored with Olivier, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel and a record six Astaire Awards. She directed and choreographed The Producers, winner of a record-making 12 Tony Awards including Best Direction and Best Choreography. She co-created, directed and choreographed the Tony Award winning musical Contact for Lincoln Center Theater, which was honored with a 2003 Emmy Award for "Live from Lincoln Center". She directed and choreographed the critically acclaimed musical The Scottsboro Boys on Broadway and in the West End, where it was honored with the Evening Standard Award for Best Musical. Her most recent Broadway shows include the Delia Ephron play Left on Tenth, the new Kander and Ebb musical New York, New York, and Selina Fillinger's play POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive. Other Broadway credits include Oklahoma!, Show Boat, Prince of Broadway, Bullets Over Broadway, Big Fish, Young Frankenstein, Thou Shalt Not, The Music Man, The Frogs, Big, Steel Pier, Picnic, and Crazy for You.
Off-Broadway credits include: The Beast in the Jungle, Dot, Flora the Red Menace, And the World Goes 'Round, Happiness and The Last Two People on Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville starring Mandy Patinkin and Taylor Mac. For ten years she choreographed Madison Square Garden's annual spectacular A Christmas Carol. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut directing and choreographing The Merry Widow, starring Renée Fleming. Her London West End productions include Crazy For You, Oklahoma!, Show Boat, Contact, The Producers, and Young Frankenstein. For New York City Ballet, she created Double Feature, a full-length ballet featuring the music of Irving Berlin and Walter Donaldson, and For the Love of Duke, featuring the music of Duke Ellington. Other ballet credits include But Not For Me for the Martha Graham Company and Take Five...More or Less for Pacific Northwest Ballet. Her choreography received an Emmy Award nomination for the HBO presentation Liza - Live from Radio City Music Hall, starring Liza Minnelli. She received the American Choreography Award for her work in Columbia Pictures feature film Center Stage. She directed and choreographed The Producers: The Movie Musical, nominated for 4 Golden Globes. In collaboration with the Williamstown Theatre Festival, she directed the play Photograph 51 for Audible and directed and choreographed the Broadway bound Ahrens/Flaherty musical Little Dancer for The Kennedy Center and Seattle's 5th Avenue Theater. She is an Associate Director for Lincoln Center Theater and a member of the Board of Directors for the Ronald O. Perelman Center for the Performing Arts located at the World Trade Center. She is the recipient of the George Abbott Award for Lifetime Achievement in the American Theater and an inductee of the Theater Hall of Fame in New York City.
David Thompson (Writer). Broadway/West End: The new libretto for the current revival of Chicago, The Scottsboro Boys (London's Critic Circle Award, Evening Standard Award, 12 Tony nominations including "Best Book," Drama Desk Nomination, Outer Critics and Lucille Lortel Awards for "Best Musical," Hull-Warriner Award), Prince of Broadway, Thou Shalt Not, Steel Pier (Tony Nomination "Best Book") and New York, New York. Off-Broadway: The Beast in the Jungle; And the World Goes 'Round (New York Drama Desk and Outer Critics' Awards); Flora, the Red Menace (Drama Desk nomination); John Cullum: The Accidental Star. UK Regional and London: The new libretto for Rags at Park Theatre. Concert: Produced and Wrote James Taylor's 'Perspective Series at Carnegie Hall, My Favorite Broadway/The Leading Ladies at Carnegie Hall. TV: "Sondheim - A Celebration at Carnegie Hall" (Emmy Nomination), "Razzle Dazzle" for Great Performances as well as the recent "Harold Prince - the Director's Life" for Great Performances. Thompson is a graduate of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism.