The Hairy Ape

About

O'Neill's 1922 expressionist drama follows Yank, a coal stoker on an ocean liner, whose encounter with a wealthy passenger's disgust triggers an existential crisis about where he belongs in the world. The play charts Yank's journey through a series of encounters — with the upper class, with a labor union, with a gorilla — each refusing him recognition. The Hairy Ape fuses expressionist staging with O'Neill's characteristic intensity to produce one of American theater's most uncompromising statements about class alienation. It was a major success for the Provincetown Players and marks O'Neill's transition from realistic to experimental methods.