{"id":364468,"date":"2026-10-05T00:30:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T00:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/364468\/"},"modified":"2026-10-05T00:30:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T00:30:08","slug":"review-the-hairy-ape-eugene-oneills-century-old-prophecy-of-americas-coming-identity-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/364468\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Hairy Ape, Eugene O\u2019Neill\u2019s Century-Old Prophecy of America\u2019s Coming Identity Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Hassiem Muhammad, John Keating, Adam Petherbridge, Ariyan Kassam, Jonathan Crimeni, Harrison Tipping, and Jon Beavers appear in the revival of Eugene O\u2019Neill\u2019s The Hairy Ape, directed by Ciar\u00e1n O\u2019Reilly, at Irish Repertory Theatre.
(\u00a9 Carol Rosegg)<\/p>\n

Speed is in Yank\u2019s blood. It\u2019s part of his identity. He shovels coal into the belly of an ocean liner, propelling the mass of steel across the Atlantic at 25 knots an hour, carrying passengers from one continent to another with unprecedented velocity. A journey that once took an entire month can now be completed in under a week. Yank knows none of it would be possible without guys like him. \u201cWho makes dis old tub run? Ain\u2019t it us guys? Well den, we belong, don\u2019t we?\u201d he asks a berth full of men just like him in the opening scene of Eugene O\u2019Neill\u2019s The Hairy Ape<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The stage radiates testosterone, glistening muscle to be sacrificed to the God of capital in director Ciar\u00e1n O\u2019Reilly\u2019s powerful new revival at the Irish Repertory Theatre. Through stunning period design, brutally efficient staging, and memorable performances, O\u2019Reilly and company show how this 1922 \u201ccomedy of ancient and modern life\u201d is, in fact, an ongoing tragedy in 2026, as the world spins faster and we hang on for dear life.<\/p>\n

For Yank (Jon Beavers), the tumble off begins when first class passenger Mildred (Elizabeth Teeter, looking like a dead flapper and behaving like Bravo\u2019s latest sociopath) descends into the bowels of the ship to \u201cdiscover how the other half lives.\u201d She gets one look at Yank\u2019s stripped down and sweaty form, one whiff of his animal musk, one earful of his colorful vulgarity\u2026and promptly faints. The ship\u2019s second engineer (Nayib Felix) whisks her back above deck, slamming the metal door shut right before Yank\u2019s shovel crashes into it with a great clang.<\/p>\n

\"\"Elizabeth Teeter plays Mildred, and Jon Beavers plays Yank in the off-Broadway revival of Eugene O\u2019Neill\u2019s The Hairy Ape, directed by Ciar\u00e1n O\u2019Reilly, at Irish Repertory Theatre.
(\u00a9 Carol Rosegg)<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2019Twas as if she\u2019d seen a great hairy ape escaped from the Zoo,\u201d remarks Paddy (John Keating), an \u201cold harp\u201d still toiling in the stokehold. It disturbs Yank that Mildred (not just any rich girl, but the daughter of the president of a great steel trust) doesn\u2019t see him as he sees himself\u2014not as the best of men, but a filthy animal. This sends him on a quest to find somewhere he belongs: Fifth Avenue, a jail cell, a meeting of communists, and finally, a cage in the Bronx Zoo.<\/p>\n

Charlie Corcoran\u2019s set, a metal box with an upper platform that rises and falls, suggests that destination from the beginning, setting O\u2019Neill\u2019s expressionist drama in the cage only a select few of us ever escape, and which will ultimately press us to death. Orla Long\u2019s costumes accentuate the theater of class, with pristine white for Mildred and her guard, distressed denim for Yank and his comrades. The stage looks like a rich oil painting of the industrial West<\/a>, fearsome and gothic, under Michael Gottlieb\u2019s dramatic lighting. With deep reds and melancholy blues, it pulls us insistently from one scene to the next in beautifully choreographed transitions (the movement is by Barry McNabb) tensely underscored by sound designers Florian Staab and Ryan Rumery.<\/p>\n

\"\"John Keating (center) plays Paddy in Eugene O\u2019Neill\u2019s The Hairy Ape, directed by Ciar\u00e1n O\u2019Reilly, at Irish Repertory Theatre.
(\u00a9 Carol Rosegg)<\/p>\n

Keating, the most consistent star of the Irish Rep for over a decade, is perfectly capable of capturing our imaginations on his own, but Rumery does him a solid by underscoring his opening monologue. \u201cA warm sun on the clean decks,\u201d he practically sings in his elegy of a sailor\u2019s life before the age of steam, a mournful pipe heard faintly in the distance. \u201cSun warming the blood of you, and wind over the miles of shiny green ocean like strong drink to your lungs. Work\u2013aye, hard work\u2013but who\u2019d mind that at all?\u201d It\u2019s Irish theatrical magic.<\/p>\n

The production benefits from excellent performances all around. Ariyan Kassam is a fire-breathing labor evangelist as Long. Joanna Glushak feels like an intruder from Wilde world as Mildred\u2019s snobbish (and clear-eyed) aunt. Adam Petherbridge brings an outrageously smug grin to his portrayal of the secretary of the IWW. And Hassiem Muhammad slathers on cheeky disdain as a prisoner reading an anti-labor speech from a certain Senator Queen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"Jon Beavers plays Yank, and Ariyan Kassam plays Long in Eugene O\u2019Neill\u2019s The Hairy Ape, directed by Ciar\u00e1n O\u2019Reilly, at Irish Repertory Theatre.
(\u00a9 Carol Rosegg)<\/p>\n

Beavers makes a heroic New York debut, embodying Yank\u2019s gruff, uncompromising masculinity, but also revealing his softer side with a boyish smile and a spark of wonder in his eyes. He easily wraps his tongue around Yank\u2019s antique Brooklynese, so it sound neither cartoonish nor forced. We never lose sight of the human beneath the hairy ape, even as Yank loses the thing he holds most dear: his sense of self and where he belongs.<\/p>\n

In O\u2019Neill\u2019s day, an older generation could, on its way out the door, mourn a world swept away by the creative destruction of capitalist modernity. A century later, one need not have reached the age of 40 to begin sounding like an old harp. How many of us will be singing Paddy\u2019s song when artificial intelligence obliterates the jobs that offer so many Americans not just sustenance, but purpose and community? To the proponents of so-called superintelligence, we are all hairy apes, to be caged or crushed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hassiem Muhammad, John Keating, Adam Petherbridge, Ariyan Kassam, Jonathan Crimeni, Harrison Tipping, and Jon Beavers appear in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-364468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}