Eugene O’Neill labeled his 8-scene play The Hairy Ape “a comedy of Ancient and Modern life.” Surely, the playwright sardonically jested because the themes relayed through the journey of the anti-hero Yank (superbly portrayed by John Beavers) a fireman (coal stoker) on a luxury cruise ship, mirror those found in Greek tragedy. However, comedic elements at times peak through the fine revival directed by Ciarán O’Reilly which runs through Novmber15, 2026 at Irish Repertory Theatre.

The shattering of Yank’s proud ego (his fatal flaw), and his inability to recover immerses the audience in his fateful journey, and shakes us to the core. With empathy we follow Yank’s growing realization that he must redefine his purpose and identity which can never align or fit in with the corrupt society of uncaring, soul dead wealthy and oppressed working stiffs alike. Eventually, the truth of his discovery destroys him before he redeems himself and creates a place where he fits in.

Initially, when O’Neill introduces Yank, we note his bellowing assertions of his sense of purpose. Amongst his fellow firemen shoveling coal, drinking and carousing on breaks to sustain themselves as they feed the fiery furnaces in the ungodly heat of the engine room, Yank projects confidence. In defining himself as integral to the movement of modern progress, he uplifts himself and his fellows’ importance to society. Without their work, their physical prowess and the steel-like resolve of what they face each back-breaking day, the weak, lazy, unregenerate upper classes could not sustain themselves.

Yank’s comments seem true enough. Certainly, the upper classes have always eschewed drudgery work and foisted it off on the lower, uneducated classes, who they also get to fight their wars to maintain their power and profits. This seems the case from feudalism to 1922, O’Neill’s setting. However, until Yank’s eyes are opened, he doesn’t understand class bigotry, nor how workers are exploited, disempowered and soul drained by a system rigged against them. Indeed, in the modern age, the wealthy deliver a double whammy.

Aligning the political class with themselves, the upper classes and captains of industry make the laws which oppress the slavish workers and mislead them to believe in the myths of getting ahead. As the underclasses dutifully pay taxes on their labor “never getting ahead,” the wealthy avoid paying their fair share because the politicians rig the system in their favor, having the courts and cops enforce the rigging. In O’Neill’s introductory jest, the play is so modern it is as current as today’s headlines.

Yank commands the conversation and men in Charlie Corcoran’s suggestive and stylized bunk room, and later in the smoking, red hot furnace room deep in the ship’s belly. Unfortunately, his brash, inflexible stance leaves no room for other viewpoints. Paddy’s lyrical comments about the clipper ships of the past with their healthful, unpolluted air and beauty, allowing the sailors to see the sunsets and appreciate the natural elements, are past their prime according to Yank. His uplifted mantra glamorizes the might and force of the ship’s engines representing industrialization. Despite its filthy, toxic, coal dust, and smoke-filled polluting byproducts, Yank embraces it pridefully, without thinking. He revels in “his place” there and proclaims the heat, filth and stink of the coal dust are the perfect climate for him, a man. “I’m what makes iron into steel! Steel, dat stands for de whole ting! And I’m steel—steel—steel! I’m de muscles in steel, de punch behind it.”

Through these oversized speeches which Beavers (Yank) and John Keating (Paddy) have made their own, we recognize O’Neill’s expressionism. This is the set up of ideas and symbols which O’Neill then mines throughout the rest of the play. Additionally, these symbols that Yank and the others express, become the platform from which Yank takes his great fall into the abyss which breaks him apart.

From the realistic set design of the “the lower depths” the scene moves to a view of the level above with two representatives from the upper class at leisure; their state which Yank suggested earlier is unproductive. The young Mildred (Elizabeth Teeter) and her aunt (Joanna Glushak) snipe at each other as they sun themselves on the upper deck of the cruise ship. Mildred, who wants to feel a sense of purpose, has taken classes in sociology. She intends to see “how the other half lives,” using the ship as her laboratory. By lying and leveraging her father’s position of ownership, she arranges a visit to the ship’s bowels, the engine room. Her aunt objects to the visit calling her a “poseur,” a hypocrite, questioning her sincerity. Afraid, to upset her father, the officers oblige Mildred and take her to the engine room.

At the worst time for her visit when Yank is raving at the Captain’s whistle, Mildred arrives emerging like a ghost into their midst. When she sees and hears Yank, he turns around aware of his fellow stokers’ silence at her entrance. As they look at each other in alarm, she defines him forever, calling him “a filthy beast,” and faints in disgust as the officers remove her. Yank attempts to recoup from her offensive observation of him, the antithesis of how he characterizes himself. Paddy suggests it’s “love at first sight,” humorously. The men tease Yank and discuss her classist slur. Gradually, they turn over the purpose of her visit to “look” at them. Paddy translates her look at Yank as if he was a “hairy ape.” Beside himself with rage at her humiliation, that he is lower than a man, Yank vows to find her, avenge himself and restore his smashed ego.

Unless one understands the depths of Yank’s despair and fury at her conversion of what he loved most about himself, “a manly man,” into an ape, his journey for vengeance and complete deterioration and loss of self makes no sense. By degrees Beavers expertly reveals Yank’s terrible desolation. Unable to release himself from “her truth,” he allows Long to take him to Fifth Avenue where the rich Mildred may be found in church (an ironic hypocrisy) or the exclusive shops that ironically feature a monkey fur jacket in an upscale store window that distracts the shoppers.

O’Reilly expressionistically stages the Fifth Avenue scene threading O’Neill’s symbolism of the fake, artificial society to highlight the contrast with the coal stoker. The wealthy wear stylized outfits and gesture like stiff, unreal figures. Their mannerisms references Yank’s earlier characterization of them not being alive. Yank, confused by the Fifth Avenue crowds, dressed symbolically in masks and glitter like jacked up, automatons, searches for Mildred. Not seeing her, angry, he attempts to confront and engage any of them in the medium he feels most comfortable, a physical fight. Ignored, rebuffed Yank’s behavior gets him thrown in jail. Only the police and Yank appear real. Normally dressed, Yank in his fireman’s jacket, and the cops in their uniforms provide a contrasting authenticity with “high society,” that ends in his being brutalized and caged (like a beast in the zoo).

Getting tips about how to fight Mildred and her class from fellow prisoners, Yank ends up at the offices of the International Workers of the World. After five minutes of conversation with the Secretary (Adam Petherbridge) they reject his membership, suspect his weird, “stupid” comments and toss him onto the streets. The parallels between the wealthy and the IWW in their response to Yank are suggestive and telling. By this point Yank has completely lost his former confidence and perspective. By allowing others to judge him and cast him out, he feels alienation and isolation which overwhelm him. He realizes he can’t fit in.

Of course, the irony tantalizes philosophically. Not fitting in can be something wonderful. Individuals go to spiritual retreats, psychiatrists, writing classes or therapy sessions when the ego shatters and self-knowledge opens one’s mind and soul in awareness. Not fitting in with the toxic and corrupt is an advantage. Unfortunately, Yank has neither the money, the status, the intellectual or psychological means to lift himself up, make sense of his feelings and make his own place away from the nullifying society. O’Neill’s expressionism, well conveyed by the actors, creatives and O’Reilly’s direction, indicts the industrial, technological machinery of progress Yank thought emblazoned him but instead destroys him.

At O’Neill’s fascinating conclusion we note that Yank goes to a place seeking comfort, in order to look at himself in a different mirror. There, he sinks to a depth from which he never returns and never saw coming. And neither did the audience.

The Hairy Ape has no intermission and runs 1 hour 30 minutes on the Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage. https://irishrep.org/whats-on/the-hairy-ape