Typecasting comes in two forms. 

The first: when an actor has limited range beyond the type they’re cast into. 

The second has more to do with audiences. When an actor builds a career off a consistent persona — ESPECIALLY one defined by widespread affability — it can be dangerous to subvert this persona in the eyes of the audience. Poking holes in the persona might forever tarnish how much audiences find that lucrative persona to be appealing. 

Theater is a safer space for this sort of upheaval, simply due to the reduced number of eyeballs. 

Enter: John Krasinski in Angry Alan.

Everyone will recognize good-guy Jim / Mr. Blunt, but Penelope Skinner’s play peels back the layers of the wicked underbelly potentially undergirding Krasinski’s typical personality, revealing the darkness that his performed facade might be an attempt to mask. 

As I walked out of Studio Seaview (still more the Kiser than not), I heard multiple versions of, “I’ll never be able to see him in the same way again.”