O’Neill’s ‘Hairy Ape’ Still Speaks to an Age of Inequality

It’s not hard to guess what prompted Charlotte Moore and Ciarán O’Reilly, the co-founders of Irish Repertory Theater, to revisit “The Hairy Ape.” When Mr. O’Reilly helmed a 2006 production of Eugene O’Neill’s study of a stoker on an ocean liner who finds himself deemed utterly worthless in the world, artificial intelligence was known most widely to many for being the subject of a Steven Spielberg movie.Even more significantly, economic inequality and corruption had not yet reached the fever pitch we see today, as the gap continues to widen not only between the rich and poor but between the comfortably well-off and the insanely wealthy. Mind you, O’Neill’s tragic protagonist, Robert “Yank” Smith, initially prides himself on being at “de bottom,” as he puts it in an early monologue, carping at a co-worker’s suggestion that they’re all only “wage slaves in the bowels of a bloody ship.”Yank counters, “Slaves, hell! We run de whole woiks,” and he’s clearly game to punch anyone who would suggest otherwise. Only after he follows a young woman who has wounded his pride in search of vengeance is he disillusioned, gradually and painfully, of the notion that he truly can “belong”—a word that he uses over and over again—anywhere.The role of Yank has attracted great actors ranging from Paul Robeson to Bobby Cannavale, and for his new production at Irish Rep, Mr. O’Reilly has found another: Jon Beavers, who is making his New York stage debut in the part. A regional theater veteran, Mr. Beavers has the right physical bearing; tall and broad-shouldered, he looms over the actors cast as his fellow laborers, the picture of a brutish bully.Jon Beavers and Adam Petherbridge in ‘The Hairy Ape.’ Via Carol Rosegg.What makes the performance so piercing, though, is Mr. Beavers’s ability, under Mr. O’Reilly’s typically expert guidance, to convey the sense of isolation and hurt that fuel this behavior, leading Yank to make increasingly bad choices. At one point, following a tip he received during a stint in jail, he turns up at the office of Industrial Workers of the World, thinking he can use his sheer brawn and fearlessness to make a difference, and is utterly humiliated—though as anyone familiar with the play knows, worse lies ahead. An excellent ensemble lends support, with several actors juggling roles. Irish Rep stalwart John Keating is wryly affecting as an older stoker who riles Yank in the first scene, while Adam Petherbridge makes the condescending IWW secretary credibly condescending. Elizabeth Teeter and Joanna Glushak contribute welcome comic relief as, respectively, the daughter of privilege whose disdain sends Yank on his journey and her stuffy aunt.Charlie Corcoran’s striking two-tier set emphasizes the upstairs/downstairs nature of the class divide so central to the story. The stokers’ spartan quarters descend at one point to reveal the ship’s deck, where the high-born women recline on chairs; later, we see the filthy, fiery stokehole—lit to ominous effect in Michael Gottlieb’s design—before landing in front of a lushly appointed department store on Fifth Avenue.The final and most chilling scene unfolds in the Bronx Zoo, and gives Mr. Beavers some heady competition in its visuals. Still, you’ll have trouble taking your eyes off the actor, or shaking off this fierce, timely staging after the curtain falls.

O’Neill’s ‘Hairy Ape’ Still Speaks to an Age of Inequality

O’Neill’s ‘Hairy Ape’ Still Speaks to an Age of Inequality

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