Contrary to what you might assume from the poster art showing him erupting in an anguished scream, John Krasinski doesn’t play the title role in Angry Alan, the new play being presented at off-Broadway’s Studio Seaview. In this (mostly) one-person drama written by British playwright Penelope Skinner and (as the credits put it) “created with” Don Mackay, Krasinski plays Roger, a middle-aged man who’s hit hard times. Formerly an AT&T executive who commanded a high salary and drove a BMW, he’s now a dairy manager at a supermarket, reduced frequently to working the graveyard shift. He’s divorced and barely sees his teenage son, Joe, whom he misses terribly. In short, he’s a prime candidate for the sort of online radicalization to which people can succumb if they fall down the internet rabbit hole.
In Roger’s case, that rabbit hole is in the form of Angry Alan, who has his own website and YouTube channel. A men’s rights proselytizer in the Andrew Tate/Jordan Peterson mode, Angry Alan rails against the “Gynocentric Society” that is the inevitable result of a “female-dominated political regime” that has subjugated men. Roger is greatly impressed that Alan backs up his ideas with facts and figures, such as that men are less likely to go to college than women but are more likely to become victims of violent crime, die in combat, and commit suicide. Roger, who addresses us directly, rejoices in his newfound enlightenment, which he describes as his “Red Pill moment.”
“Maybe it’s not actually all my fault,” he says about his reduced status in life. “Maybe what’s really to blame is the system.” Soon he’s forwarding Angry Alan’s “Men Are Intrinsically Good” video to friends and even his son.
Roger’s live-in girlfriend, Courtney, who’s recently started attending art classes and has taken to wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “Carry Yourself with the Confidence of a Mediocre White Man,” is unsurprisingly skeptical of Roger’s new passion. That doesn’t stop him from cancelling his child support payment to pay the expensive fee to attend Angry Alan’s “Men’s Rights Conference” and even ponying up enough of a donation to qualify him as a “Gold Donor.”
The play, originally presented at the 2018 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, skewers and satirizes the ideas that Roger is parroting, and the manner in which he absorbed them, with copious amounts of humor. Most cannily, Skinner makes Roger sympathetic, even likable, rather than obviously loathsome. The casting of Krasinski is a masterstroke, with the actor’s inherent charm and warm appeal fascinatingly contrasting with the frequently loathsome ideas his character is expressing. Addressing us in the same folky, self-deprecating manner as he did playing Jim Halpert in The Office, the actor instantly has the audience on his side, providing an uncomfortable tension to the proceedings. This is most vividly demonstrated in a scene late in the play, the surprise of which won’t be revealed here. But he never simply coasts on his charisma, fully delineating Roger’s descent into the anger and hostility engendered by his online guru.
Sam Gold, a director so much more effective with original material than when he’s desecrating classics (The Glass Menagerie, King Lear), stages the proceedings for maximum impact, making excellent use of video projections (designed by Lucky Mackinnon) to showcase Roger’s internet obsession. The set design by the collective dots perfectly encapsulates the character’s reduced status, his modest suburban living room dominated by a pullout couch that looks profoundly uncomfortable.
Angry Alan, the inaugural production at the new Studio Seaview (formerly home to Second Stage), marks an auspicious beginning for the Seaview production company’s new venture.
Angry Alan opened June 11, 2025 at Studio Seaview and runs through August 3. Tickets and information: studioseaview.com
