Meet a man with a grievance, and the actor who plays him: Cody Porter in Angry Alan at Northern Light

By Liz Nicholls, .ca

“For the first time in a really long time I feel like someone is speaking to me in a language which I completely understand … something which makes me feel good about myself.” Roger in Angry Alan

In the solo play that opens Friday in the Northern Light Theatre season, we meet a man with a grievance — a lot of grievances.

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The protagonist of Angry Alan, a 2018 Edinburgh Fringe hit by the Brit playwright Penelope Skinner (Fucked, Meek, The Village Bike), is seething with resentment. The third assistant manager of a Safeway, Roger feels under-appreciated, stalled indefinitely in his rise to status. It’s when he discovers an online website, Angry Alan, which feeds on the frustrations of under-achieving white males, he finds a home for his smouldering, then burning, sense of injustice. The new recruit is radicalized — empowered by the mens’ rights movement that lashes back at #MeToo and all that implies.

Roger, a poster boy for the manipulation of toxic masculinity, is a juicy role, to be sure, — but a tricky guy to play. Cody Porter agrees, and laughs. “I was very surprised and delighted when Trevor (Northern Light artistic director Trevor Schmidt) asked me to do the show! And, yes, I was conflicted about it on a first reading, not knowing if I agreed with (anything about) Roger. Which I fully, obviously, don’t.”

The versatile Porter, whose resumé is full of character roles, isn’t a stranger to solo shows either. “The thing about them,” he jokes, “is that the cast parties are just not as fun.”

At the 2023 Fringe audiences saw him in Amor de Cosmos: a delusional musical, a solo musical (by Lindsey Walker and Richard Kemick) — 90 minutes foreshortened for Fringe purposes to a frenetic 60 — about a real-life eccentric. The 19th century loon Amor de Cosmos might have been an ideal candidate for recruitment by a movement like Angry Alan. He became the second premier of B.C., an M.P, and then slid into the crazy right-wing.  In 2014, he starred in the Will Eno solo play thom pain: based on nothing, a complex kind of free-associative existential comedy à  la Beckett. Porter laughs, “I’m all about making things simple and straightforward.”

Rehearsing Angry Alan is downright leisurely in comparison to speed-up Fringe preparations, says the actor, a University of Regina and AMDA (American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York) grad.  He moved to Edmonton in the early 2000s to manage the Princess Theatre in its arthouse heyday.

Lately Porter the actor has been introduced to Porter the improviser (“I try to do workshops outside my discipline if I can”). A quick-witted sort, he did improv workshops at Grindstone Theatre; he’s  joined the Die-Nasty cast in their gold rush season. And the improv skill set, he’s found, certainly doesn’t go amiss in preparing solo shows.

“I’m a bit of preparation hound,” says Porter cheerfully. “I like to feel confident about what I’m doing onstage…. Taking (improv) on has really changed my perspective and my practice. There are no emergencies any more (laughter). If something doesn’t go the way you want, just breathe! Once you get over the idea you have a plan … find where you are, and move on.”

“Actors have some advantages doing improv,” he thinks, since that repertoire of skills included “what direction to face onstage, how to project, how to use your physicality and voice, how to build a character quickly.” Which speaks to the unusually strong link between improv and theatre that’s enhanced the quality of both on Edmonton stages.  “You’re a stronger over-all performer when you get different perspectives on practising the craft.”

Roger’s a handful. “The challenge for a progressively-minded person is is to find the humanity of the character, to not make him the butt of a joke,” says Porter, who was part of the Freewill Shakespeare Festival ensemble in their mobile production of The Tempest this past summer. “I want to think there’s still hope of finding the common humanity we all have…. To understand that however polarized we are a society, the great equalizer is the idea of empathy. And it’s totally absent from some of the movements out there.”

“If Roger were just a pathetic loser,” or an incomprehensible whack-job, “it might be a different play…. What appealed to me (about the play) is that if you take it in the right way it’s not satire,” Porter thinks. “It’s not just crazy people who believe these things; there are real human beings who are disaffected, in a world operating in ways it hasn’t before….”

“The pendulum is swinging … trying to equalize a long-established power dynamic. And if that’s your identity.… Well, we all need to find a place to belong in this world.”

Roger’s “search for something better,” inevitably, takes him through the fateful portal into the internet world. “That’s where the answers are,” Porter sighs. “Scary. And also true…. We seek out things we agree with, things we believe.” He remembers, nostalgically, going to parties where you could disagree with people “and they’re not your enemy.”

Porter laughs, a bit ruefully. “Now that we’re into Part 2 of the administration (you know, that one across the border), Angry Alan isn’t dated at all.”

PREVIEW

Angry Alan

Theatre: Northern Light Theatre

Written by: Penelope Skinner

Directed by: Trevor Schmidt

Starring: Cody Porter

Where: Studio Theatre, Fringe Arts Barns, 10330- 84 Ave.

Running: Jan. 24 through Feb. 8

Tickets: northernlighttheatre.com