Two celebrated storytellers, Alan Cumming and Ari Shapiro, will join forces in their hilarious two-man show, “Och & Oy: A Considered Cabaret,” on July 7 at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center. Born of an impromptu collaboration, the cabaret is an evening of songs and stories with a tongue-in-cheek title that reflects their Scottish and Jewish heritage.
We’re very excited to see the show. How did the idea come about?
Ari: Alan and I have been friends for years. During the show, I tell the story of the first time we met, after we had done a few public events together, one where I interviewed him about his book, another where we talked about the 50th anniversary of Stonewall. We were walking off stage, and he said to me, “You know, we have such a great rapport, we should make a show together.” I stopped, and I turned to him, and I said, “Alan, don’t joke about that because if you are making this offer, I’ll absolutely take you up on it.”
Alan: We met when he came to see me in “Cabaret” in 2014. And then we just became friends… I just really liked him. We had a bit of chemistry. It was a proper conversation. It wasn’t just a sort of fluff thing like these things can be. And then we did another thing for the museum in Washington, and it was really a fun night. And as we walked off, I said to him, “Gosh, you know, we’ve got such a good rapport.” The next day, I called up and said, “I still mean it, Ari.” And then we just got it together very quickly.
Ari: I went up to New York, and we spent one weekend kind of brainstorming, and then a month later, we spent another weekend around my piano in Washington, D.C. with our musical director Henry. And then we had a show. And it has been so fun to now travel all over the country with it and with Alan as we have been through pandemics and reality TV shows and books and movies and radio broadcasts. We’ve been able to reunite every couple of weeks or months and have a great time together, these two friends on a stage singing and telling stories.
You’re both so busy, I’m sure. How do you manage to find the time? How do you balance it all?
Alan: Well, I mean, we’ve been doing it since 2019. We did a couple of shows. Our first premiered in Provincetown, and then, of course, we didn’t do any in 2020. We started to do it again a little bit in ’21, and it’s amped up last year and this year. I mean, it is difficult to plan it. We have the same concert agent, Scott, so that’s good. He kind of liaises with us. I mean, obviously, Ari’s got a day job, and as do I, but his is more sort of structured. It’s actually worked out pretty well. It is challenging, but we’ve managed it.
Ari: Well, the nice thing is these bookings tend to come many months in advance. And so we can carve out the time, and I basically take vacation days from my day job at NPR. It might not be relaxing, like laying on a beach, but it is thrilling and delightful and leaves me energized for the day job that I return to when we’re done with it. And similarly, Alan is squeezing these performances in between trips to film, movies, and TV shows and creating the fabulous things that he is constantly creating. And so every time we meet up, it’s like, “Well, where have you been? And what have you been doing?” And “Oh, I saw you in this thing, and I heard you doing that thing.”
The show itself is a mix of music and storytelling. Can you tell us more about that and what the audience can expect?
Alan: The structure of the show is that we are two very different people and an oddball couple. We talk about our similarities, as well as allowing our character differences and the way we rib each other to kind of make it entertaining. But we talk about things: about coming out, about getting married. We talk about how we met and about performing. Then, at the end, I tell stories about people. The message we’re trying to say is that, to the world, we have a lot more in common with each other in general than we might imagine.
Ari: The thing that I love about the genre of cabaret is that it can encompass so many things. So there can be pop songs and show tunes. There can be heartfelt, serious moments and ridiculous body jokes. And I like to think that our show takes audiences through all of that. I hope that it feels like people are eavesdropping on two old friends, having a great time cracking each other up, and every now and then, we stop to sing a song together.
Do you have a chance to visit the East End often? Is there anything you’re excited to do while you’re in town?
Ari: Well, because I live in Washington, D.C., I really don’t make it out to the Hamptons. I feel like it’s a summer destination for New Yorkers mostly. So I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to go there and see it and have that experience in the summer and, you know, pretend to be a New Yorker on holiday for a few days.
Alan: I might visit some friends. I’ve gone out obviously over the years, gone out to things in Hamptons, and it’s lovely. I’ve got a couple of friends who’ve got places I’ve gone to. It would be nice to stay actually for a couple of nights — a bit of seaside, a bit of sand. I live in the Catskills. I’m a Catskills sort of boy rather than a seaside Hamptons boy. But I always have a nice time when I go. The traffic’s annoying, though. I love the [WHBPAC] theater. I’ve played my solo show there. Always very nice, very lovely.
