With wealth disparity on the rise and a Democratic Socialist occupying New York City Hall, it seems like a perfect moment to revisit Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape. The 1922 expressionist drama centers on a muscled working man frustrated in his efforts to find his place in the world — and to get anybody to notice him, even when he’s lashing out against the monied powers that be. Ciarán O’Reilly’s stylish revival benefits from an evocative set and lighting design that makes the most of the Irish Rep’s cramped stage as well as a star-making turn by Jon Beavers (Paradise) in the title role.
In his New York stage debut, the 42-year-old Beavers memorably towers over his castmates and exudes the charisma of a born leader who can immediately shut down the chattering, dawdling, and shanty-singing of his bunkmates on the ship where they toil below decks stoking the coal furnaces. Yank thinks he knows his place in the world, a hard-working driver of the nation’s industrial largesse, and he’s quick to reject both the nostalgic resignation of the ship’s wistful Irish old-timer (John Keating) and the passionate Communist arguments of a well-read Brit (Ariyan Kassam) seeking revolution by the book. Beavers captures both Yank’s imposing physicality and his longing to be appreciated as more than just a necessary cog in the machine. It’s a sense, a desire that he struggles to articulate let alone pinpoint. That shortfall is the heart of O’Neill’s tragedy.
Yank’s resentment of the upper classes who take his labors for granted is triggered when a privileged young woman (Elizabeth Teeter), the daughter of a steel tycoon who fancies herself a social reformer, ignores the advice of her aunt/chaperone (Joanna Glushak) and visits the stokehole to see “how the other half lives.” While Teeter overplays Mildred’s fluttery rebelliousness, the superficiality of her do-goodism is immediately exposed when she encounters a sweaty, barechested Yank with his shovel raised menacingly above her head. She impulsively calls him a “filthy beast” before fainting.
The encounter radicalizes Yank to act out. His crewmates need to restrain him from attacking Teeter’s dilettantish Mildred, and he embarks on a kind of quest upon arriving on shore in New York City. He lashes out at well-dressed strangers, lands himself in jail, then tries to join a labor union (only to discover it’s not an underground terrorist organization). Eventually, he heads to the gorilla cage at the Bronx Zoo in a last-ditch effort to connect with a creature like the one to which he’s been so often compared. Hairy ape, meet hairy ape.
Charlie Corcoran’s clever two-level set design makes smart use of the Irish Rep’s narrow stage, with a plank-like platform rising and falling to reinforce the upstairs-downstairs social strata depicted in the play. Michael Gottlieb’s lighting, Florian Staab’s visceral sound design, and Orla Long’s costumes evoke both the extreme heat of the stokehole and the luxe extravagance of 1920s high society.
It’s no accident that the word belong appears more than 40 times in O’Neill’s drama. Beaver’s Yank is a physically imposing man who suffers from dual frustrations: Not only does he never seem at home anywhere but he also struggles to be seen. Though he commands the respect of his shipmates, outside of the boiler room he suffers from either knee-jerk fear or, worse, invisibility. Nobody takes him seriously, or recognizes his contributions or worth to society. While there’s a schematic quality to O’Neill’s narrative, there are flashes of poetry, too, and a social consciousness that still speaks to Americans a century later. Plus, this production benefits from a gritty, red-blooded performance by Beavers, who captures Yank’s brutishness but also his resentment at being seen as just a brute. ★★★★☆
THE HAIRY APE
Irish Rep, Off Broadway
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes (no intermission)
Tickets on sale through November 15 for $55 to $125