{"id":2445059,"date":"2019-06-06T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-06T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=307548"},"modified":"2019-06-06T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-06-06T22:00:00","slug":"after-rave-reviews-overseas-angry-alan-returns-to-aspen-fringe-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/after-rave-reviews-overseas-angry-alan-returns-to-aspen-fringe-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"After rave reviews overseas, \u2018Angry Alan\u2019 returns to Aspen Fringe Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Donald Sage Mackay will perform “Angry Alan” at Aspen Fringe Festival on Saturday at the Wheeler Opera House.<\/strong>
Courtesy photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Since the first performance of playwright Penelope Skinner\u2019s \u201cAngry Alan\u201d at the Aspen Fringe Festival two years ago, the seminal one-man play has landed cross-continental productions and become the toast of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and London\u2019s West End.<\/p>\n

This weekend the play and the actor Donald Sage Mackay, who\u2019s performed it from the beginning, are bringing \u201cAngry Alan\u201d back to Aspen Fringe for a Wheeler Opera House performance on Saturday night.<\/p>\n

Mackay plays Roger, a seemingly affable straight white guy who feels alienated by the progress toward gender equality and who falls under the influence of an online men\u2019s rights provocateur dubbed \u201cAngry Alan.\u201d Skinner, an acclaimed British playwright and Mackay\u2019s off-stage partner, wrote this darkly comic portrait specifically for Mackay.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe kind of theater I like to do is changing people\u2019s minds and hearts and I feel like this does that,\u201d Mackay said this week from London, where he joined the protests against President Trump\u2019s state visit.<\/p>\n

The president is mentioned just once in the play, and it\u2019s not an anti-Trump work, through it tackles the toxic masculinity, aspects of the #MeToo movement and online radicalization of white men that have attended the Trump era. \u201cAngry Alan\u201d goes to the heart of the far-right movements that have gripped the U.S. and Europe in recent years. And it does so in a way that all the books and journalistic think-pieces and social media posts about it haven\u2019t been able to yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople respond to my character because he is a likeable guy and we\u2019re with him for part of it, and as it turns darker you go \u2018uh-oh,\u2019\u201d Mackay said. \u201cBut you feel for him throughout. It allows you to have empathy for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Skinner put it during rehearsals for the original Aspen Fringe performance<\/a>, \u201cMy hope is that we\u2019ll reach the person in the audience who might feel some reflection of their experience, or they\u2019ll see something in the play they\u2019ve struggled with or wondered about, and then they might have a conversation about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The full house at the June 2017 performance at Aspen\u2019s Black Box Theatre included the artistic director of a theater in Delhi, who approached Skinner and Mackay after the show and booked \u201cAngry Alan\u201d for India, noting that the country has its own version of the men\u2019s rights movement as it grapples with women\u2019s ascendance in the workplace and changing gender roles in Indian society.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018Men are having difficulty and this piece speaks to the zeitgeist of the moment,\u2019\u201d Mackay recalled.<\/p>\n

During Mackay\u2019s two performances there, the audiences included men\u2019s rights proponents who cried out during the show in support of Mackay\u2019s character as he falls into the misogynistic ideology of the movement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe talk-back afterwards was very interesting because there were guys in the audience who were against the message of the piece and they were shut-down by the majority of the audience, especially the women,\u201d Mackay recalled.<\/p>\n

From there, \u201cAngry Alan\u201d earned a spot in Edinburgh backed by producer Francesca Moody, whose \u201cFleabag\u201d launched from the 2013 Edinburgh festival to acclaimed West End and Off-Brodway runs before being adapted into a smash BBC and Amazon series. When Moody took interest, Mackay and Skinner began to understand \u201cAngry Alan\u201d might take off.<\/p>\n

It quickly did. At Edinburgh last summer, it sold out for its entire month-long run and won the coveted Fringe First Award, which earned it a run at London\u2019s Soho Theatre. Quickly it was one the theater world\u2019s most talked-about new plays.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was pretty exciting that we got that kind of response,\u201d said Mackay.<\/p>\n

The show landed a spot on New York Times theater critic Matt Wolf\u2019s short list of the best plays in Europe in 2018<\/a>. (Wolf wrote \u201cMackay\u2019s shrewdly observed performance charts a slide toward psychosis that allows the actor to both charm and chill.\u201d)<\/p>\n

The show\u2019s London producers also bought the television rights to the \u201cAngry Alan\u201d and, according to Mackay, are working with a major studio to adapt it for the screen.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt could get the message of this piece out to millions of people who can\u2019t get out to the theater,\u201d Mackay said.<\/p>\n

The play\u2019s runaway success is a feather in the cap of Aspen Fringe, which is on a years-long roll of creative coups including visits, productions and workshops by of-the-moment playwrights like Skinner, Lucas Hnath and Sharr White. Bringing \u201cAngry Alan\u201d \u2013 which Skinner has revised \u2013 back to Aspen for its first full American production was a natural fit.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thought, \u2018Why not bring it back to Aspen where it all started and do it at the Wheeler?\u201d Mackay said. \u201cIt\u2019s exciting. It\u2019s a piece that speaks to the moment in an incredible way. We didn\u2019t know it would have this sort of response.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mackay said he had a sense after that first Aspen reading that \u201cAngry Alan\u201d could be something special.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Aspen I had an inkling, and then in India I said, \u2018Wow, this can really touch people in different cultures,\u201d \u201cAnd Edinburgh, of course, was ridiculously amazing. At that point I knew we had something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mackay, longtime co-artistic director at the Fringe Fest, has been a staple of its productions through most of its 11 years. Local theatergoers have recognized him in television parts over the years, including \u201cMad Men\u201d (he was the doctor who delivered Peggy Olson\u2019s baby), \u201cModern Family\u201d and most recently in a major role on \u201cDeep State,\u201d now in its second season on Fox.<\/p>\n

Along with planning an international tour and plotting a possible New York run for \u201cAngry Alan,\u201d Mackay is due to star in the upcoming London production of Conor McPherson\u2019s play with Bob Dylan music, \u201cGirl from the North Country,\u201d which drew acclaim for its New York run last fall.<\/p>\n

Amid all this recognition, he\u2019s proud to return to the familiar stages of Aspen.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m thrilled to finally bring \u2018Angry Alan\u2019 back to America for the first time,\u201d Mackay said. \u201cI feel so sad for what\u2019s happening in America. Bringing \u2018Angry Alan\u2019 back to Aspen, it feels redemptive to me to land on American soil and do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAngry Alan\u201d is the centerpiece of an issues-driven Fringe Fest lineup that opens Friday at the Wheeler with San Francisco-based PUSH Dance Company performing the multimedia \u201cCodelining.\u201d Choreographed by Raissa Simpson, the ballet is a commentary on gentrification in the Bay Area and beyond. The performance caps a Fringe residency for the company.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe is a choreographer who has something to say,\u201d Fringe Fest dance director Adrianna Thompson said of Simpson.<\/p>\n

The festival closes with a two-night Fringe Lab workshop production of David Ireland\u2019s \u201cUlster American\u201d at the Black Box on Monday and Tuesday. The explosive comedy about abuses of power and patriarchy centers on an Oscar-winning American actor and an Irish playwright-director pair. It came to the festival\u2019s attention during its run at Edinburgh Fringe last summer and has yet to be produced in the U.S. Directed by Fringe mainstay Maurice Lamee, \u201cUlster American\u201d reunites former Aspenite Nikki Boxer with actor and Fringe Fest founder David Ledingham \u2013 the pair who co-led a scorching 2014 production of \u201cVenus in Fur\u201d that remains one of the most talked-about in the festival\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese pieces allow audiences to evaluate issues, make up their own minds,\u201d Ledingham said of 2019\u2019s topical lineup. \u201cIt can make a difference in their lives and what they want to support or not support.\u201d<\/p>\n

atravers@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Donald Sage Mackay will perform “Angry Alan” at Aspen Fringe Festival on Saturday at the Wheeler Opera House.Courtesy photo Since the first performance of playwright Penelope Skinner\u2019s \u201cAngry Alan\u201d at the Aspen Fringe Festival two years ago, the seminal one-man play has landed cross-continental productions and become the toast of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2445059","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-19 10:10:48","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2445059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445059\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2445059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2445059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2445059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}