Theater review by Sandy MacDonald
Rating: Not recommended
The brutish ocean-liner stoker called Yank, who propels Eugene O’Neill’s expressionistic 1922 play The Hairy Ape, is basically a two-note role: He’s aggressively boastful, then aggrieved. Jon Beavers hits both extremes with admirable vigor. Impressively built, albeit not hirsute, he morphs easily from braggadocious grunt to humiliated would-be social activist. Yank may rant at great length about what a powerhouse he is—“I’m parta de engines!”—but at length he’s forced to see his status as that of a born patsy: the unschooled, unskilled flotsam of a tiered society that views him only as cheap labor.
The Hairy Ape | Photograph: Courtesy Carol Rosegg
All it takes to trigger Yank’s rage is a passing glimpse of an elegant phantasm descended from the privileged promenade deck. Rebel debutante Mildred (Elizabeth Teeter) arranges a slumming expedition to the boiler room, scandalizing her snappish chaperone (Joanna Glushak), The dialogue is actually quite shocking—this proto-flapper has a mixed agenda and attitude to spare—so we’re not adequately set up for Mildred's reaction upon penetrating the lower depths, where the crew shovels coal in choreographed lockstep like pistons in a machine. “Oh, the filthy beast!” she whimpers before swooning.
The Hairy Ape | Photograph: Courtesy Carol Rosegg
Vowing revenge on the ruling class in general and this entitled princess in particular, Yank joins a socialist shipmate (Ariyan Kassam, grounded) on a fact-finding excursion to toff territory—here represented by a pair of shabby storefront windows emblazoned “Saks Fifth Ave.” His mission culminates in a danse macabre of oblivious gentry sporting diamanté masks as they mill about like the undead.
The Hairy Ape | Photograph: Courtesy Carol Rosegg
Set designer Charlie Corcoran has done his best to adapt the Irish Rep’s tiny mainstage to accommodate a handful of distinct settings. (O, for the vasty deep of the Park Avenue Armory, where Bobby Cannavale led a lavish Old Vic import of The Hairy Ape in 2017!) The shifts in locale signal concomitant lurches in mood, which director Ciarán O'Reilly doesn’t always handle adroitly.
A few moments do manage to shine. Company stalwart John Keating, as Yank’s fellow crewman Paddy, has a resplendent early moment rhapsodizing about the joys of working as a deckhand in the olden times, scudding aboard “clippers wid tall masts touching the sky…” Another standout scene pits Yank against a functionary at the headquarters of the International Workers of the World (a measured Adam Petherbridge) who dismisses his fantasies of violent retribution.
The Hairy Ape | Photograph: Courtesy Carol Rosegg
Otherwise, the production marches rather dully to a foreshadowed conclusion, navigating O’Neill’s endlessly indulgent soliloquies along the way. Alexander Woollcott found The Hairy Ape “a monstrously uneven piece, now flamingly eloquent, now choked and thwarted and inarticulate.” Irish Rep’s effort to keep it in the forefront—as the class gap grows ever wider—warrants respect, but the passage of more than a century has not greatly improved the work’s luster.
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The Hairy Ape | Photograph: Courtesy Carol Rosegg
