by Mary Glucksman

Life in a Broadway show can be intense even when the play is tame; when the show is "Cabaret" and the theater is the old Studio 54 space refashioned as the story's Kit Kat Klub, performances go by like fever dreams and anything seems possible. That's pretty much how Scottish actor Alan Cumming, "Cabaret"’s Tony-winning pansexual emcee, and veteran actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, making her Broadway debut as showgirl Sally Bowles, hatched a plan to co-direct a film. Cumming had already directed several shorts in Britain between stints as a high-profile Hamlet in biker shorts and the West End revival of "Cabaret," where he originated the emcee role. He put his directing aspirations aside when his acting career took off after a turn in Eyes Wide Shut. Leigh came to "Cabaret" from a role in the Dogme 95 effort The King Is Alive.

So began The Anniversary Party, which Cumming and Leigh co-wrote, successfully pitched to Fine Line, and shot on digital video this summer. The film covers 24 hours in the life of a couple – Cumming and Lee – celebrating the end of a year's separation with – what else – an anniversary bash. The festive mood unravels when one party gift leads to a game of truth or consequences no one on hand will walk away from intact. Sound familiar? Not this time. For one thing, Cumming started off as the distaff half of British comedy team Victor and Barry, so he's used to writing his own material, the more outrageous the better. And while Anniversary Party provides Leigh's first writing credit, she co-produced as well as starred in Georgia after unofficially helping her mother, screenwriter Barbara Turner (Pollock), tweak the title role. Cumming and Leigh looked no further than their combined filmographies to cast Anniversary’s party guests, who include Gwyneth Paltrow, Parker Posey, Kevin Kline, Phoebe Cates, John C. Reilly, John Benjamin Hickey, Jennifer Beals and Jane Adams.The Anniversary Party should hit theaters sometime this spring.

Leigh has three more films on the way as an actress – Tamra Davis’ Skipped Parts, Sergei Bodrov’s The Quickie, and Kristian Levring’s The King is Alive (in theaters this spring via Newmarket and Good Machine International). She's also working on her mother’s directorial debut, Beautiful View. Cumming can be seen next on screen in Company Man, Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids and Alan Rudolph’s Investigating Sex, all in the can and slated for early 2001. He’s back on Broadway in January in "Design for Living," a Noel Coward revival co-starring Julianne Moore, and working with "Sex and the City" producer Alan Heinberg on an HBO series about celebrity in America that he'll executive produce as well as star in. And what’s not on the stage will be on the page about a year from now when his first novel, Tommy's Tale, is due out from Harper Collins.

Check out Cumming’s official website, launching 12/25/00, at www.alancumming.com. It will have up-to-the-minute details on The Anniversary Party and links galore. His diaries about opening "Cabaret" in New York are excerpted in Cabaret: The Illustrated Book and Lyrics.