Kit Kat break

And it is at that moment that Faye Dunaway chooses to pay a state visit on Alan Cumming. The moment - and sundry others like them as celebs beat a path to his backstage door - sums up the currently surreal lifestyle of the Scots actor who is now the undisputed toast of Broadway. Cabaret's Emcee Takes the Town screams the headline on InTheatre magazine's front cover. In the last two weeks he's picked up two major critical awards, and on Sunday he'll find out if he's captured the biggie - he's nominated for a Tony, against two stars from Ragtime and one from The Scarlet Pimpernel.

''I don't think I fully realised just what I was getting into,'' he says. ''I must have been a bit naive because I just hadn't cottoned on to how big a deal even getting to Broadway was. It's only after being here a few months and meeting guys who've spent 10 years on off-Broadway or off-off-Broadway that you begin to appreciate what's happening. And the Tony thing is a complete madhouse, there is a huge publicity circus for it going on all the time just now, and you have to cope with that as well as the show.''

Cabaret, the Sam Mendes production from London, is housed in New York on West 43rd in a venue which could hardly be more perfect - the Kit Kat Club, set out as a night club round the stage.

Cumming, in the role originally made famous in the movie version by Joel Gray, gives an extraordinary performance. Nothing in his previous career prepares you for the full-frontal assault of his character - an arresting mix of lewd decadence and comic menace.

''All of that was easier for me than for some who joined the production in New York,'' he says. ''I remember thinking at the rehearsals last December, oh you poor dears you just don't know what's about to happen to you.'' What does happen is much fondling and groping and suggestive choreography allied to brilliantly realised production numbers. Cumming insists that comparisons with the movie are odious but the fact that he so dominates the show that you can barely remember the Gray version is testament to his on-stage power. Gray in fact came to one of the awards ceremonies where Cumming was honoured and delivered a pastiche of the Wilkommen number.

''People have said to me how difficult it must have been following his portrayal, but just think how difficult that must have been for him that night,'' says Cumming. ''But everyone here is astonishingly generous. They come round and tell you how much they like the show in a way that just doesn't happen at home.

''My mother came over, having never even been to America before let alone a Broadway show, and people kept shouting to her 'loved your son Mrs Cumming'. She was completely entranced by it all.''

Cumming will probably sign up as asked until the end of this year, and may also make a permanent home in New York. Thanks to Cabaret there are a neat pile of job offers awaiting his decision: ''And the great thing is that I can now look at them in terms of what is good for me, and what would give me most satisfaction - this has given me that kind of freedom.'' But high on his list of priorities is a film - Younger than Springtime - which he hopes to make with Peter Broughan, and that would bring him back home to Glasgow next year. His mammy will be pleased.