The Hairy Ape
Director Kirsten Kelly has other ideas in her production of O’Neill’s play for Mary-Arrchie Theatre. In fact, she has so many ideas–too often lacking in similar big, burly productions–that the 11 men she shepherds through O’Neill’s masterful semisocialist parable of malignant modernism rarely need to thump their chests or cup their genitalia. Understanding that the early O’Neill was more expressionist than realist, she has her actors shovel coal with a kind of unstudied grace. They become dancers by default, seemingly unaware of their own choreographic precision, fulfilling O’Neill’s direction that the mayhem have a “mechanical regulated recurrence, a tempo.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Mary-Arrchie’s Hairy Ape has its weaknesses. Certain ensemble stretches devolve into monotonous shouting, and the depiction of automatonlike New York society is unconvincing. The acting is strong but, with the exception of Cathleen Bentley as Mildred, never great. With all this production’s rough edges and loose ends, however, it’s precisely the kind of staging that makes Chicago such an exciting theater town. This Hairy Ape hasn’t been packaged and sanitized; it’s still emerging from a flurry of ideas, still struggling into completeness–and given our political economy and O’Neill’s genius, struggling against formidable odds. This is a messy, rigorous, exhausting, exhilarating evening that probes human nature more deeply than most slick commercial productions ever could. Grappling with O’Neill, these artists may not be entirely victorious, but they do emerge ennobled.
