The Irish Repertory Theatre's production of Eugene O'Neill's 1922 drama The Hairy Ape is a brilliant tour de force that highlights the Irish heritage of the playwright and the play.
Director Ciarán O'Reilly (also Irish Rep's producing director), aided by Eugene Lee's versatile set, brings out the play's expressionism without reducing the proceedings to a historical venture. The coal stokers pirouette, lending them grace; the Fifth Avenue swells march grotesquely. The sound design by Zachary Williamson and Gabe Wood employs echoes and hums to underscore O'Neill's lyrical language, and Brian Nason's highly saturated lighting turns the play into a dark fairy tale. O'Reilly's cast is tops, particularly Greg Derelian in the title role, a stoker named Yank. Derelian's boyish appeal fills O'Neill's odd patois -- replete with "get me" and "yuh see" -- with melody.
When shipmate Paddy (Gerald Finnegan) yearns for a life open to the sky and leads the crew in the Irish chantey "Whisky Johnny," Yank vehemently protests that Paddy "don't belong no more." When spoiled Mildred (Kerry Bishé) ventures below deck to "investigate how the other half lives" and promptly faints from revulsion, Yank's overreaction shows us how much of his previous bluster was really bravado. It's Paddy, however, who first uses the term "hairy ape," and it's Paddy who pours salt into Yank's hurt. The ape imagery describes the hulk of the stokers below deck, but it also invokes the ugly cartoon caricatures stereotyping the Irish that persisted well into the 20th century.
Yank, with Communist-rhetoric-spouting cockney compatriot Long (David Lansbury), visits Fifth Avenue to see the class from which Mildred hails (in 1922, the Soviet Union still seemed utopian). A stay in jail, rejection by the Industrial Workers of the World union, and an attempt to bond with an actual ape at the Bronx Zoo -- following a night under the sky that makes Yank appreciate "what Paddy said about dat bein' de right dope" -- break Yank's spirit and body, and the hearts of the audience. It's unrelenting -- and unforgettable.
Presented by and at the Irish Repertory Theatre,
132 W. 22nd St., NYC.
Oct. 5-Nov. 26. Wed.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Wed., Sat., and Sun., 3 p.m.
(212) 727-2737.
Casting by Deborah Brown.