The Hairy Ape by Ian Wolfgang Hinz (review)

For almost four decades, Cleveland’s Ensemble Theatre has earned a reputation as a favorable venue for Eugene O’Neill’s work. In the last four years alone, the company has offered a run of strong productions, including The Iceman Cometh, Beyond the Horizon, “Anna Christie,” and now a thought-provoking and timely interpretation of The Hairy Ape, directed by Ian Wolfgang Hinz. In a conversation before the show, Hinz shared with me his view that The Hairy Ape is a “challenging” work to stage. The success of this relatively simple production demonstrated that despite its mix of realist and expressionist elements, O’Neill’s play doesn’t require elaborate visual or technical effects to be engaging and socially relevant.

The current Ensemble Theatre performance space, a slightly elevated open square platform with seating on three sides, supports intimate stagings that situate actors and audience on common ground. This production begins with the cast simply filing in alongside the spectators. Striding down the aisles in conversation with each other, they take positions in casual dis-array in the foreground, an arm’s length from the first row of seats. Only Yank assumes a standing position center-stage; from there he faces a mixed company of fellow stokers and the audience and, as if delivering a lecture, dominates the scene 1 debate about whether the stokehole is “hell,” and what “belongs” or doesn’t.

And yet Yank’s dominance, relying on what critics have called his psychological “cohesiveness,” is short-lived. One of this production’s points of interest is that the alpha stoker from the first seems worried, confused, and besieged. This is partly because the scene 1 speeches of Paddy and Long, respectively about sailing ships and socialism, are cogently delivered by speakers who do not surrender their opinions. One gets the feeling that Joseph Milan’s Yank, who listens intently and tilts his head in gestures of perplexity, is moved in spite of himself. Even before Mildred Douglas intrudes to wreck the stoker’s composure, Milan conveys in Yank a psychological vulnerability that elicits sympathy.

The supporting cast shows clearly that Yank is not the play’s only interesting character. Allen Branstein’s Paddy reminds us how substantial this role can be. Paddy’s soliloquy about working in the open air under the “wide sky” is a reminder that the play’s sometimes raw language can also be lyrical and beautiful. The Irishman’s nostalgic treatment of the splendor of sailing ships and the thrill of life at sea is a signature moment in the production, something O’Neill seems to have composed with strong emotions that Branstein configures into a moving paean to natural beauty.

As the class-conscious stoker Long, James Rankin does fine work in his opening speech and in accompanying Yank in scene 5, the Hairy Ape’s excursion on Fifth Avenue. Also in this scene, the convulsive gait and fitful, erratic gestures of the “gaudy marionettes,” who speak through sleek white form-fitting masks, express the diseased artificiality of the modern bourgeoisie.

As the IWW Secretary, Keith Kornajcik invests his character with real individuality and interest. When Yank enters the IWW premises in scene 7, the Secretary is incognito at the back of the room, but starting from this distant point proves effective. The conversation between Yank and the Secretary from opposite ends of the set becomes a spectacle; as the Secretary becomes more suspicious of Yank, he paces and circles, then closes in to give the order that the newcomer be apprehended and ejected. By this time even an audience unfamiliar with the play understands that “belonging” is the core issue and Yank’s unsolvable problem.

A determining factor in any production of The Hairy Ape is the role of Mildred Douglas. Here Mildred is played by Brittany Ganser, a young actress who, in the on-deck conversation with her Aunt in scene 2, does well in projecting the petulance and spoiled nature of the leisure-class social worker on...