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THE HAIRY APE by Ciarán O'ReillyReview by: Robert S. McLeanThe Eugene O'Neill Review, Vol. 29 (2007), pp. 180-183Published by: Penn State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29784840 .
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Performance Reviews
THE HAIRY APE, directed by Ciar?n O'Reilly. Irish Repertory Theatre, 132 West 22nd Street, New York City, 21 November 2006.
Director
Ciar?n O'Reilly and a talented cast presented a memorable produc? tion of Eugene O'Neill's expressionist play, The Hairy Ape, at the Irish
Repertory Theatre this fall. Mr. O'Reilly sensitively followed O'Neill's stage directions exhibiting expressive symbolic scenes intermixed with stark real? ism. The result was a resonant and moving performance that left the playgoer
with a lot to think about. Mr. Greg Derelian played well the role of the central character Yank, a man
torn from his traditional culture by the industrial revolution and thrust into the lowest depths of the working class at the turn of the century, a man uneducated and totally bereft of traditional supports of family, farm, village, religion, lan?
guage, and country. He is physically and spiritually dispossessed, a victim of
brutality and wage slavery, and a man who, in his words, does not "belong." Symbolic of the countless millions of immigrants who have been forced off their lands and out of their own countries, he must accept any degrading work that he is lucky enough to find. As Yank expresses his isolation at the end of the last scene when he tells the gorilla: "But me?I ain't got no past to tink in, nor nothin' dat's comin', only what's now?and dat don't belong."
In time, the surviving Yanks will accept the cheap popular culture that is offered to them in popular music, spectator sports, sensational daily tabloids, sitcoms, mindless movies, and so forth, diversions that will numb the mind of enthusiasts and rob them of the ability to think. O'Neill displays enormous
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Performance Reviews 181
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Greg Derelian as Yank in the Irish Repertory Theatre production of The Hairy Ape. Photo credit: Carol Rosegg.
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182 The Eugene O'Neill Review
social understanding in his creation of his character Yank. He is a spiritual and physical derelict of the industrial revolution. From another perspective, The Hairy Ape is O'Neill's most Marxist play, showing the exploitation and
oppression of the stokers in the fiery bowels of the capitalist-owned great international liner, and having a working-class Marxist among the crew com?
menting on the sad action, the eloquent and articulate fellow stoker, Long. All of this social significance is portrayed realistically and symbolically
in the production. The first scene opens in the forecastle of a great ocean liner, where the bunk beds of the coal stokers are located deep in the ship. In this confined space the stokers drink and act out their boisterous lives. They are a raucous, rowdy, dirty, and violent bunch, stomping feet and beating time to a mad rhythm. Mr. Derelian as Yank stands separated from the group since he is the leader, the biggest and strongest of these beast-like men. They are
trying to adapt to a savage and impossible home sequestered deep within the bowels of the great ship, a hidden life as if the ship were ashamed of their
presence and desired to keep them out of sight. Central to this fine production was a consistent unity of effect. All the
elements of this drama, the costuming, the sound effects, the lighting, the ensemble acting, the props, the expressionist movement such as lockstep, pantomime, robotic walking and so forth, melded to create the crushing and hostile world of privilege and oppression, rank and subordination. In a sense the conflict on this great ocean liner was a microcosm of the whole social
system, a metaphor that countless writers have used to satirize the ship of state, and O'Neill's choice of expressionism was an excellent medium to portray the lifeless, arid, and loveless world of exploitation and suppression in which human beings are more like animals or bloodless, artificial robots.
Good ensemble acting persisted throughout the production. Mr. Derelian
expressed the savagery of Yank and also his sorrow as he is beaten down wherever he goes, betrayed by his own savage nature. He played the realis? tic scenes well and also the expressionist scenes when he imitated the ape that Yank gradually recognizes within himself. Mildred, played by Emma
O'Donnell, substituting for Kerry Bishe, acted the frail, artificial and snob? bish upper-class woman with the necessary superficiality of the character. David Lansbury as the working-class radical gave a sincere portrayal of man
with a mission and acted something like a Greek chorus commenting on the
society that afflicted the stokers. Paddy, played by Gerald Finnegan, made a great old salt who started his career in the sailing days, and who makes a
beautiful poetic speech on the beauty of the clipper ships in full sail. The contrast with that vanished era and the sordid present is too clear to com?
ment. Delphi Harrington, as Mildred's aunt, presented another portrait of an artificial stereotype of an unfeeling, upper-class dowager, overflowing with
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Performance Reviews 183
contempt for all those beneath her. Costume designer Linda Fisher used her skills to portray class divisions,
literally, in black and white. All the women and all the ship's officers were turned out in immaculate white, looking something like angels or Olympian gods, while the lower class types were clothed in working clothes blackened
by soot. Set Designer Eugene Lee created a series of expressionist sets to
symbolize the ideas in the play. After viewing the forecastle scene of drunken
debauchery, the audience saw a set come down and stop above the forecastle. This was an upper deck where we first meet Mildred and her aunt and the
ship's officers, all turned out in white. The aristocrats above and the dirty stokers below symbolized the theme of the play. Mr. Lee's furnace room was a coup de theatre of expressionism. In a darkened room lit mostly by the red,
roaring fires showing through the open doors of the furnaces, with the stokers
shoveling frantically and maniacally and constantly throwing coal into the
inferno, all summoned up fierce visions of Hell mouths vividly and horribly depicted in medieval dramas. And the ear-splitting roars and cacophonous sounds conjured by Sound Designers Zachary Williamson and Gabe Wood in the furnace room scene rivaled pandemonium or a Witches' Sabbath. No doubt a goodly number of other good people contributed to the success of this production, and we are also thankful to them, but we are most thankful to
Director O'Reilly, Artistic Director Charlotte Moore and the Irish Repertory Theatre for putting on this production.
Robert S. McLean
City University of New York
MARCO MILLIONS (BASED ON LIES), adapted from the play by Eugene O'Neill. Directed by Tom Ridgely. Waterwell, The Lion at Theatre Row, 410 West 42nd Street, New York, NY, 4-26 August 2006.
Before attending Waterwell's adaptation of Marco Millions, Eugene
O'Neill's expressionistic satire of Western greed, I decided to reread the original text. Just as I suspected: so complex in its scene changes, so
demanding of its set and costume designers, so weighed down by its gi? gantic cast (O'Neill lists 31 characters, along with "People of Persia, India,
Mongolia, Cathay, courtiers, nobles, ladies, wives, warriors of KublaVs court, musicians, dancers, Chorus of mourners"), so convoluted in its mixture of
genres?dialogue, music, poetry, chanting, etc.?and so hilarious and tragic at the same time, I was doubtful that the play could be faithfully staged at $35 a ticket. I was right?it wasn't. Instead, the hour-and-a-half production (with
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