07 February 2019
Newsdesk
Following a smash-hit sell-out run at the Edinburgh Festival, Penelope Skinner’s Fringe-First award winning play Angry Alan now transfers to Soho Theatre. This darkly comic play about masculinity in crisis is written and directed by multi-award-winning playwright Penelope Skinner (The Village Bike, Royal Court Theatre; Linda, Royal Court and Manhattan Theatre Club) and co- created and performed by Donald Sage Mackay (True West, Vaudeville Theatre; Deep State, Fox TV; Linda, Manhattan Theatre Club).
Looking out over the country, this country, where I was born and raised, I wonder what's going to become of us. Because this can't be the future, can it? Everyone just... changing the rules?
Roger thinks the world's gone mad. He hates his job, his ex-wife torments him and to top it all, his girlfriend just discovered feminism. Roger’s about to lose his shit. Until he discovers Angry Alan: online activist and ‘voice of reason’...
In 2016, in the wake of Trump’s election, Penelope Skinner was inspired to write a play about the anger which is dominating today’s political landscape. In doing so she stumbled across the Men’s Right’s Movement and, along with American actor Donald Sage Mackay, began creating Angry Alan, a story about Roger, an ordinary American man being radicalised online by an extremist movement. Angry Alan explores how any extreme political viewpoint can take root in someone’s consciousness if they are vulnerable to it and how those who propagate such views may not be all that they seem.
Mackay is superb, and Skinner (who also directs) keeps it both simple and observant. She doesn't seem to judge Roger at all – just to make us see more clearly the dangers of the kind of warped self-realisation he is encouraged by online forums to feel. It is a fierce, clear warning of what is going on, and it is utterly terrifying (What’s On Stage).
Angry Alan is a ruthlessly funny, timely and powerful play by one of the UK's most significant feminist playwrights.
Penelope Skinner and Donald Sage Mackay comment, We were delighted with the response to Angry Alan in Edinburgh and are so pleased to be coming to the Soho Theatre. Soho feels like the perfect home for this piece. And in this fraught and polarised political climate, we are grateful for the opportunity to keep telling this story.
Tuesday 5th - Saturday 30th March 2019
Soho Theatre, 21 Dean Street, London W1D 3NE
Tickets are available from www.sohotheatre.com or 020 7478 0100 priced from £11 - £26.
Soho Theatre is located on Dean Street. The nearest underground stations are Tottenham Court Road (on the Central and Northern lines), Oxford Circus Street (on the Bakerloo, Central and Victoria line) and Leicester Square (on the Northern and Piccadilly lines). The nearest rail station is Charing Cross.
Notes Ages 14+
Penelope Skinner
Penelope Skinner’s other work includes: Theatre: Meek (Headlong/Traverse Theatre, UK tour); Linda (Royal Court; Manhattan Theatre Club); The Ruins of Civilization (Manhattan Theatre Club); Fred’s Diner (Chichester Festival Theatre; Magic Theatre, San Francisco); The Village Bike (Royal Court; MCC); The Sound of Heavy Rain (Paines Plough Roundabout Tour); Eigengrau (Bush Theatre) and Fucked (Old Red Lion; Assembly Rooms,
Edinburgh). Television: Fresh Meat (Channel 4, seasons 1-4). Film How I Live Now (Film 4, dir. Kevin Macdonald). Short Film: The Unicorn (as writer/director; BFI, Daybreak
Productions). Graphic novel: Briony Hatch, co-written with her sister Ginny Skinner.
Donald Sage Mackay
Donald trained with an MFA, Acting at the University of California at San Diego and the Moscow Art Theatre. Theatre includes: True West (Vaudeville Theatre, currently running in the West End), Angry Alan (Edinburgh Fringe, Aspen Fringe and Shri Ram Centre, Delhi), White Guy on the Bus (Finborough), A Moon for the Misbegotten (Lyric Theatre, Belfast and New York), Linda (Manhattan Theatre Club, Off-Broadway), Fred’s Diner and The Other Place (Magic Theatre, San Francisco), Our Town (Actors Theatre of Louisville), stop. reset. (Signature Theatre, Off- Broadway), Blood & Gifts and His Girl Friday (La Jolla Playhouse), The Game's Afoot (Cleveland Play House), Six Degrees of Separation (Old Globe Theatre), and leading roles at various Shakespeare Festivals throughout the U.S. Television includes: Deep State (recurring Seasons 1 and 2), The Looming Tower, Modern Family, Mad Men, Frasier, Masters of Sex, Elementary, Blue Bloods, The Good Wife, House, The West Wing, NCIS, Law and Order: SVU, Criminal Minds, Weeds, The Shield, Star Trek Enterprise, According to Jim, ER, and recurring roles on Scrubs, The Practice and Providence. Film includes: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
