SCOTTISH actor, writer and activist Alan Cumming will bring his award-winning show Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs! to York Barbican on October 11.

The 51-year-old Hollywood and Broadway star, from Aberfeldy, will parade "the full range of this Renaissance man's talents" when he plays the London Palladium, Brighton, York and Gateshead this autumn, joined by his long-time collaborator and Emmy-winning musical director Lance Horne.

Cumming's audience can expect "intimate secrets and raucous anecdotes, delivered with disarming emotional honesty, as well as his own, very personal reinterpretations of the songs he loves to perform", from Kurt Weill and Noël Coward, via Stephen Sondheim and Rufus Wainwright, to Lady Gaga and Katy Perry.

Inspired by his post-show dressing-room parties during his Broadway run as Emcee in Cabaret, Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs! premiered at New York’s Café Carlyle, going on to sell out Carnegie Hall. He will headline at the Edinburgh International Festival this August too.

Cumming is a Tony and Olivier Award winner and a multiple Golden Globe and Emmy nominee too, known for his roles on television in The Good Wife, on the silver screen in X2 and Eyes Wide Shut and on stage in Alan Cumming's Macbeth and The Seagull.

He is the author of the memoir Not My Father’s Son and the forthcoming You Gotta Get Bigger Dreams; he has appeared on a postage stamp and guested on Sesame Street; and in 2009 he was awarded the OBE by The Queen, whose portrait was taken down in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery when his was unveiled.

Tickets go on sale at £28 on Friday at 9am at yorkbarbican.co.uk, on 0844 854 2757 or in person from the Barbican box office.