Body hair isn’t a subject a reviewer expects to discuss during a theater-going career. Then again, when The Hairy Ape, Eugene O’Neill’s 1922 drama, is revived, as it is now at the Irish Repertory Theatre (the company does so from time to time), body hair requires at least some brief attention.
That’s The Hairy Ape, which O’Neill designated as “a comedy of ancient and modern life in eight scenes,” although it’s hardly a comedy. (Was this his little joke?) That’s The Hairy Ape, which didn’t win the Pulitzer Prize, although O’Neill did win the Pulitzer in 1920 (it’s second year) for Beyond the Horizon, and then again in 1922 for Anna Christie. (It seems as if the committee didn’t want to award him for two works in one year.) He won again in 1928 for Strange Interlude, as well as a posthumous prize in 1957 for Long Day’s Journey Into Night.
Given the title, you’d expect the main character to be a hairy-chested galoot, which does cause something of a jolt when Ciarán O’Brien’s new production gets going. Many of the bare-chested actors on stage as the ship’s coal stokers, are hairy-enough to qualify in a ship-oriented play about the sea, a subject O’Neill all but concentrated on in his early career. But not, in this case, the protagonist.
[Read Michael Sommers’ ★★★☆☆ review here.]
There’s no question that in writing The Hairy Ape, O’Neill’s intention was to present the central character Yank as, at the very least, threatening in his appearance: gorilla-like. Hence the title. At the Irish Rep, it takes some time to identify that the actor outlining the play’s complaint is the central character, Yank (John Beavers). He’s angry that the world fails to honor the dignified contributions he and his fellow coal stokers are making for humankind. At the denouement, O’Neill even has Yank visit a zoo to observe a gorilla. His motive: pathetic self-comparison.
I was able to appreciate O’Neill’s primary argument that capitalism has its undeniably deleterious effects, a screed that has its dated aspects in 2026 but when considered in the context of 1922 makes perfect sense. It becomes obvious that Yank— whose real name is Robert Smith, which couldn’t be more commonplace unless it was John Jones—is intended to be an Everyman caught up in the traps of a class society, a society where the upper-class will always dominate.
Representing the upper-class here is Mildred Douglas (Elizabeth Teeter), daughter of the millionaire steel-mogul owner of the ship where far below the luxurious decks Yank (the nickname also pointedly generic) shovels a hungry furnace during long shifts. Imperious as a steel princess might be expected to carry on, she gets it in her mind to visit the stokehole. When she does and is brought face to face with Yank, the rightly fiery stage direction stipulates:
“[P]aralyzed with horror, terror, her whole personality crushed, beaten in, collapsed, by the terrific impact of this unknown, abysmal brutality, naked and shameless. As she looks at his gorilla face, as his eyes bore into hers, she utters a low, choking cry and shrinks away from him, putting both hands up before her eyes to shut out the sight of his face, to protect her own.”
That’s surely something, no? As a result of all this inner tumult, she cries out, “You filthy beast,” which shocks Yank. He’s further devastated when a fellow stoker explains she was calling him a hairy ape. It’s an uncomplimentary remark that isn’t quite accurate here. At the conclusion, Yank even visits a zoo to watch a gorilla. He’s determined to make a pathetic conclusion, a self-destructive conclusion. (When the play was filmed in 1944, the great character actor William Bendix was an extremely hairy Yank.)
The ad hominem outcry lands as a metaphor for the lower-class-upper-class confrontation O’Neill is waging. The ultimately negative view Yank gives into, as an unconquerable plight, is the heart-breaking reality from which he cannot free himself.
How well does O’Reilly bring O’Neill’s angry (gorilla-like?) opus to the stage? Moderately well. Throughout the first of O’Neill’s eight scenes, he has Yank and cohorts bellowing but somehow succeeding only at volume, not at their deeper feelings as outcasts. In the later scene, though, when they leave the New Yorky City docks for a stroll on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue and a gander at the monied congregation just out of church, their disdain laced with deprivation hits the mark. That the nobs and snobs parade in glittery masks does go a bit far (Orla Long, the costume designer), but maybe this production decision serves O’Neill’s satirical intention. (Charlie Corcoran ingeniously devised the complicated set.)
Certainly, this The Hairy Ape has its effects. Yank’s anger about being a gorilla in the eyes of at least one beholder feeds his mounting fears that a hairy ape is all he really is. O’Neill’s finale bluntly gets this across in the writing, but it’s up to any production to match his intention. The more gorilla-like the production’s Yank is, the truer it is to O’Neill. In other words, the hairier the better. It all comes down to that popular contemporary pastime: Optics.
The Hairy Ape opened October 4, 2026, at the Irish Repertory Theatre and runs through November 15. Tickets and information: irishrep.org
