The Irish Rep Opens Its 19th Season With A Big Gorilla

Ciarán O'Reilly Directs Eugene O'Neill's Classic "The Hairy Ape"

By John Mooney

The Irish Repertory Theatre begins its 19th season with a new production of Eugene O'Neill's classic The Hairy Ape, directed by Ciarán O'Reilly.

When The Hairy Ape, one of Eugene O'Neill's favorite plays, opened in 1922 it set the theatrical world on fire. This journey of a dark-souled, brutish ship laborer known as Yank is a riveting story of a common man's search for belonging in a world controlled by the rich and powerful.

As head coal stoker on a steam-powered ocean liner, Yank is in his element: he rules his dark smoky world and powers the ship. He BELONGS.

But when Mildred, the beautiful, pale, spoiled daughter of the ship's owner visits the engine room for a thrill ("to see how the other half lives,") she becomes terrified by Yank and the toiling workers she sees.

Half in love with the unattainable and half blinded by rage, the bewildered Yank plots revenge against Mildred for looking at him as if he were a hairy ape. He blunders violently through Manhattan, where both high society and union brotherhood of dock workers refuse him. When Yank joins the fledgling I.W.W. to be part of "radical" union, he's rebuffed by the members believe he's a spy for the capitalists after hearing him articulate plans to blow up a steel mill owned by Mildred's industrialist father.

The hulking Gregory Derelian gives a powerful performance as Yank. Using a booming, New York longshoreman's accent, he presents a compelling, yet pitiable lead character. Yank searches for belonging, and once he is removed from his domain below the ship, he becomes an outcast. With his muscular frame, hunched gait, chest banging, and appropriately hairy forearms, Derelian commands the audience's attention whether he's toiling shirtless on the ship or locked in a cage at a police precinct.

"O'Neill's greatness lies in his ability to express the inner turmoil of the common man's heart and soul. He does so with the clarity that comes from the experience of living and working amongst those he writes about," said director and Irish Rep co-founder Ciarán O'Reilly, who had long wanted to stage the play. "Yank was based on a sailor named Driscoll whom he had befriended when he worked on an ocean liner."

"The Hairy Ape is relevant today because it asks the fundamental question in human existence: 'How do I belong?' Everybody, regardless of their social or economic status needs to know their purpose in life; they need to know that their contribution to living is valid... that they Belong," O'Reilly added.

"In our digital/dot.com world, more and more people are alienated from their senses of self-value and are searching for some peace. When Mildred insults the work of which Yank is fiercely proud, he loses his sense. He unravels."

Eugene O'Neill, one of the greatest American playwrights, a restless and bold experimenter, won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1936. Among O'Neill's best-known plays are Anna Christie, Desire Under The Elms, The Emperor Jones, Long Day's Journey into Night, and The Iceman Cometh. O'Neill's plays frequently depict people who have no hope of controlling their destinies.

Director Ciarán O'Reilly has much to work with, including a strong lead actor, and innovative set design by Eugene Lee that provides a feeling of open air for the first-class passengers and of confinement for the workers in the ocean liner boiler room.

The ensemble cast adeptly switches roles from sailors and policeman to laborers and inmates, and from Fifth Avenue gentry to union representatives and, yes, even a gorilla. The female characters (Kerry Bishé as the pretentious young lady in white and Delphi Harrington as her sharp-tongued aunt/chaperone) are one-dimensional roles.

The cast includes Jason Denuszek, David Lansbury, Jon Levenson, Allen McCullough, Cork native Michael Mellamphy, Kevin O'Donnell, and Jerry Finnegan, who is convincing as Paddy, an old sea dog.

Since its founding in 1988, the Irish Repertory Theatre has presented major works by Sean O'Casey, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Brendan Behan, Dylan Thomas, and Samuel Beckett, and contemporary writers such as Brian Friel and Frank McCourt. It received the 2005 Lucille Lortel Outstanding Body of Work award and won the New York Drama Desk Award for Excellence in Presenting Distinguished Irish Drama. The Irish Rep has undertaken a $6 million capital campaign and has raised more than $4 million towards its goal to purchase a permanent home for its theatre, rehearsal studio, and administrative offices on West 22nd Street.