Alan Cumming sings his sappy songs in Sarasota Sunday

When he first started performing “Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs,” it was intimate shows in a small club in New York City.

“There were 100 people there and they were eating their dinner,” Cumming said.

On Sunday, he’ll perform the same show at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall in Sarasota, where the seating capacity is in excess of 1,700. It’s one of those instances, he said, in which size does not matter.

“The size of the theater doesn’t have anything to do with intimacy,” he said in a phone interview from his New York City home. “Intimacy is about your connection with the audience. That’s something I’ve learned doing this show. The size of the theater does not matter.”

Cumming, as some people may not know, is a star of stage (he won a Tony Award for playing the Emcee in “Cabaret” and an Olivier Award for “Accidental Death of an Anarchist”), film (he has 50 movies to his credit, including “Eyes Wide Shut,” “Nicholas Nickleby” and “Josie and the Pussycats”) and TV (he played Eli Gold on “The Good Wife” for seven seasons).

In “Sappy Songs,” he’s onstage with a three-piece band (piano, cello and drums) and he tells stories and sings songs.

“It’s an old-fashioned cabaret,” he said. “I think of it as a tribute to authenticity.”

The title makes the show sound kind of fluffy, and it has its share of hilarious moments, he said. But it also has a lot of power. Cumming focuses on songs that have made an impact in his life and tells stories that have made him the person he is today. Among the show’s songs are Annie Lennox’ “Why,” Rufus Wainwright’s “Dinner at Eight,” Keane’s “Somewhere Only We Know,” and Billy Joel’s “Goodnight Saigon.”

“I picked that title because I wanted people to know I’d be singing emotionally charged songs,” Cumming said. “At the same time I wanted them to know they were going to laugh. I think perhaps that the word ‘sappy’ has a bit of a negative connotation in America that it doesn’t have in Britain.”

The stories he tells during the show are likewise emotionally charged, and likewise often funny.

“By the time the show’s over,” Cumming said, “people are likely to know more about me than they ever wanted to know.”

Besides his acting work, Cumming co-hosted the 2015 Tony Awards with Kristin Chenoweth (who will be at Van Wezel on March 12) and has authored an autobiography and a novel. He and his husband, illustrator Grant Shaffer, have also written a children’s book that should be available soon.

Details: 7 p.m. March 5, Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, 777 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. $46-76. 941-953-3368, vanwezel.org.

This story was originally published March 1, 2017 at 4:03 PM with the headline "Alan Cumming sings his sappy songs in Sarasota Sunday."