Multi-award winning playwright Penelope Skinner (The Village Bike, Royal Court Theatre; Linda, Royal Court and Manhattan Theatre Club) returns to Edinburgh for the first time since 2009 with the world premiere of Angry Alan, her darkly comic and provocative new play about masculinity in crisis.
Roger thinks the world’s gone mad. He hates his job, his ex-wife torments him, his son is in trouble but won’t tell him why. And to top it all, his girlfriend just discovered feminism. Roger is about to lose his shit. Until he discovers Angry Alan: online activist and ‘Voice Of Reason’…
In 2016, Penelope Skinner stumbled across the Men’s Right’s Movement and began writing Angry Alan, a story about a 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 extreme views aren’t necessarily all they are presenting themselves as.
Starring Donald Sage Mackay (Deep State, Fox TV; Linda, Manhattan Theatre Club), Angry Alan is a searing, timely and achingly funny play by one of the UK’s most significant feminist playwrights.
Penelope Skinner comments, My partner Donald Sage Mackay is an American actor and, in the wake of Trump’s election, we started thinking of ways to respond artistically. Donald and I collaborated, argued, and rehearsed in our own living room. It’s a show made in the true spirit of fringe, so the Edinburgh Festival feels like the perfect place to perform Angry Alan for the first time.
Thursday 2nd – Sunday 26th August 2018, Underbelly Cowgate
