Some may see high relevance in 2025 of “The Hairy Ape,” a play written more than 100 years ago by American playwright Eugene O’Neill, that could further be seen as intriguing, unsettling and, in no small part, eerie.
Presented by the Danville-based Eugene O’Neill Foundation at Tao House as the headline production for this year’s Eugene O’Neill Festival, the production celebrates O’Neill’s 1922 play. Directed by Eric Fraisher Hayes, “The Hairy Ape” will run Sept. 5-14 in Tao House at the O’Neill Historic Site, Sept. 20-21 at Danville’s Village Theater and then jump the pond to performances in the New Ross festival in Ireland.
In a recent interview, Hayes highlights the work’s expressionist style that explores the psychology, psyches and emotions of the characters. That approach provides a rich, unique opportunity to craft an imaginative, nuanced and liberated-from-literal production, he suggests.
Importantly, the play simultaneously grounds itself in hardcore, real-life themes: identity crises, classicism, personal and public safety, intimidating physical power and the ultimate futility of using social or political force in efforts to maintain control. The expressive/hyper-real duality results in the work’s contemporary sensibilities and characters displaying complex personalities in which dissonance and harmony coexist and collide.
“What’s drawn me to this play is this central character, Yank,” says Hayes. “He’s a laborer on a ship who’s physically powerful and runs the engines. He initially thinks he belongs, then finds he’s cast out. The play is noted for caste distinctions. A catalytic exchange he has with a woman who’s the rich daughter of a steel titan and her perceived judgement of him takes Yank out of his sense of safety.”
Yank leaves the ship and becomes a seeker; a man wandering urban streets while trying to find his place in the world.
“He has to go onto an odyssey after his sense of self is destroyed,” Hayes says. “It’s relevant these days when our government is in our faces with who does and does not belong.”
To perform the lead role convincingly requires an actor able to not only command close to 80% of the play’s dialogue but to also appear remarkably forceful and extremely vulnerable. Hayes directed “The Hairy Ape” previously and in 2010, cast actor James Hiser as the protagonist. Hiser is returning 15 years later, still undeniably capable but different, Hayes says.
“He plays Yank with more nuanced understanding of his own personal sense of the role. He has to play a tough guy but one with cracks. It takes an actor who can rule the roost and then show how that confidence devolves as the cracks get wider and wider.
“Fifteen years ago, when he said the lines about fighting people, I believed him. Now it plays as if he’s trying to project dominance, but you also feel he recognizes that persuasion is better than threats and force.”
O’Neill’s expressive script allows Hayes to “be theatrical, colorful and to do things such as turn something ordinary — a kitchen sink, a bucket, cloth, suitcase, any common object — into an odd, weird, personal hell.” It invites a director to present an individualized experience of the world that stretches into vast, imagined territory, Hayes says.
Even so, Hayes says there are limitations he welcomes as challenges. The play is destined for three different venues and thus has to be highly adaptable, portable and economic in terms of shipping sets and costumes overseas. The enormous 30-pound gorilla head and chest plate used in the 2010 production is a no-go. Instead, five of the six actors — a reduction from the 10 called for in O’Neill’s original version — portray an ape.
“Every scene has ensemble groups dressed in black and with their faces covered who collect to become an oversized gorilla. When they’re playing specific characters, the costumes are minimal and their heads aren’t covered.”
Hayes says specific scenes and lines in the play are essential and keep “The Hairy Ape” from audiences exiting the theater depressed and feeling they have witnessed only the devastating trajectory of a charismatic man’s disintegration and demoralization.
“At the beginning, Yank has a rhetorical battle with Paddy, an older Irish sailor. At the end, he spouts off things he said. He notices a beautiful sunset and says Paddy has ‘the right dope.’ Instead of the mighty steel ships and force he admires at the beginning, he gains empathy for the world and appreciates open air, the sky at night, the breeze on his face.”
“The Hairy Ape” may have cemented O’Neill’s reputation as a gifted playwright and spectacular storyteller of tragic stories and lives in which people search for identity and purpose. Hayes says telling a story through the prism of a character’s psychological and emotional experience is a provocative formula — and integral to attracting and connecting to contemporary audiences.
With theater companies throughout the Bay Area fighting hard against the combined storm of cuts to federal arts funding, a weakened economy and the post-COVID-19-pandemic, everything-streamed online environment, Hayes says the O’Neill Foundation is no exception. Even so, says the organization is in a fortunate position.
“It helps we have a niche: a prominent national artistic figure, O’Neill, who wrote rich, American plays,” Hayes says. “The level of complexity of his work never goes out of style. So we have that source material — and Tao House, a U.S. national historic landmark and park location. Of course, the latter is something of a concern with the federal government recently shutting parks down.”
To survive, he says the festival and programs throughout the year must give people experiences they cannot get on Netflix or similar platforms.
“Things like live music in this play and having some of the shows held at the theater in Danville give people access to something they can’t experience on video or online. The discussions we offer, connections to local museum exhibits, tours of Tao House; they extend the ways the public can engage and explore our plays. They see that live theater is immersive, immediate and exciting.”
For more information about the foundation and festival, visit eugeneoneill.org online.
Lou Fancher is a freelance writer. Reach her at lou@johnsonandfancher.com.