The cast is everything, especially when a piece presents a fundamentally unpleasant character and asks us to identify – or, at least, to understand.
In such theatrical situations, this helps when the actor playing the dark protagonist gives off not only charm but is intrinsically sympathetic. Jim Parsons, with his nice guy, made the Michael surmounted by viper in “The Boys in the Band” extremely observable. In Penelope Skinner’s “Angry Alan”, John Krasinski provides a similar charisma that puts the character of Roger on the side of the public until a vexed comment after the other, the guys lights us.
Krasinski’s task here is much more difficult than the “boys” of parsons, if for no other reason that Roger is the only character we meet in the flesh in what is almost, but not quite, an 85 -minute show of a person. “Angry Alan” opened on Wednesday at the new SEAVIEW studio after its world first 2018 at the Edinburgh Festival.
Roger considers himself a victim of reverse discrimination. He is divorced, and even if he has lost his well -paid dream job in At & t, the courts demand that Roger pay a high -level alimony for a teenage son whom he rarely sees. And as male misfortune had it, hardly Roger moved with her new girlfriend than she presents herself with a group of artists on the left who sees nothing wrong with admiring the art of Picasso, despite the fact that Picasso was a sexist; Watch Woody Allen movies, despite the entire MIA / Soon-Yi / Dylan Farrow Mess; And, perhaps the worst of everything, transforming the franchise “50 Shades of Gray” into a huge success, despite all these books and films downright terrible.
Under the net direction of Sam Gold, “Angry Alan” is one of those pieces which evokes very different reactions according to your gender. Most laughs during the overview I attended had a clearly feminine wood, and it was not only the Ha-Ha variety. It’s the kind of laughter that puts a wall of resistance, saying: “Roger, stop being a hole!”
Although written and staged four years before “John Proctor is the villain” by Kimberly Belflower by Kimberly, “Angry Alan” fits into the current vogue for plays on white heteros. The difference is that “Angry Alan” shows why men like Roger act as they do. “John Proctor” simply encourages us to lynch the flu.
Roger is angry, but as being delighted by Krasinski, he is also rather kind, that is why, I think, the laughter of men in the audience can be much less pointed in his attack. Krasinski puts Lamb’s clothes to play a man who is essentially a pig. Krasinski is also very effective in playing all people in Roger’s life. He makes us want to go to the “Angry Alan” website, to which Roger has become addicted and to which he even gives a month of child alimony.
Plus Roger visits “Angry Alan”, the more his vision of the world is limited. The design of the dowry set visualizes its state of mind. At first glance, Roger’s Salon appears very detailed if it is rather generic. It was not until later that the whole turns out to be a bunch of painted apartments.
Skinner too often marks his criticism of Roger’s behavior by giving him few things that directly contradict what he has just told us. Krasinski manages these comments beautifully, throwing them after the public does not catch a moment or two later.
Roger becomes so angry Alan’s in love that he travels to hear him speak in person. Skinner makes a big mistake here. Roger is surprised to see a few women at the Alan’s male conscience Confab, only to learn that one of these women is a journalist, who, in turn, tells him when he tries to be sociable or recover it. (We never know that.) Sorry: no decent journalist writing a story about such a confab Never Awaken his true opinion to a participant. The journalist is there to ask questions, and become an active participant by verbally ransacking a guy like Roger, it is to stop enjoying the color necessary to write a good story.
Now that I got this from my journalist chest, Skinner has missed a dramatic opportunity here. The journalist should have led Roger, suggesting that she was writing a positive piece. When he then reads the article finished in the security of his vacuum of a living room, then only Roger realizes how he was used, giving him even more reasons for his feelings of victimization.
“Angry Alan” is recovered from this big failure with a surprise end which should remain a surprise. In the Playbill program, the names of five actors are listed as “cameos”. I have never seen this credit used in the theater, and four of the names are actors who appear only on stage like large photo projections. The fifth is Ryan Colone, who, in about 10 minutes of stage time, gives “Angry Alan” an end of the most explosive.
