Eugene O’ Neill The Hairy Ape

(5 stars; 2 reviews)

The Hairy Ape, Eugene O’Neill's Expressionist classic in a new American production by the leading O'Neill director, Jose Quintero. Yank, a ship's stoker, emerges from the stokehold to take revenge on a world that sees him as a 'hairy ape’. Yank:….George Dzundza Paddy:…..Eric Christmas Long:….Christopher Grove Mildred:….Deborah May Her aunt:….Mercedes Shirley Second engineer:….Steve Barr Secretary:….Bill Washington Ensemble: Kevin Symonds, Erik Holland, Antonie Becker, Jacqueline Cassel, Elaine Welton Hill, Clive Rosengren, Russ Marin, Hal Bokar, Terry Bozeman. Director, Jose Quintero Producer Erik Bauersfeld Sound Designer Randy Thom A Bay Area production Sunday Play: The Hairy Ape Sunday 18th November 1990, 19:30 on BBC Radio 3 "In The Hairy Ape , Yank is a stoker on a modern ocean liner who is 'cruder, fiercer, more truculent, more powerful, more sure of himself than the rest.' ONeill portrays him as part of the mechanism of the shipnot, as in earlier days, as a 'child of the sea' but as part of the fire and steel that make the ship and modern commercial society run. His primitive belonging is shattered when a figure (Mildred) form the top of that society descends into the stoke hole and, in horror, declares him a beast. Yank then ascends to the outside world to search futilely for a new place to belong. ONeill writes of the play: 'I have tried to probe in the shadow of the soul of man bewildered by the disharmony of his primitive pride and individualism at war with the mechanistic development of society. And the manis an American.'" The Hairy Ape initiated an interest by ONeill in an expressionist form for drama evolving out of his earlier naturalism and developed further in such works as The Great God Brown and Dynamo . ONeill in The Hairy Ape s introduction wrote: 'The treatment of any scene in the play should be by no means naturalistic.' One of his directions for the voices of the crew is that they have a 'brazen, metallic quality as if their throats were phonograph horns.' In this production, Director Jose Quintero and Sound Designer Randy Thom have worked to fully realize ONeill's original vision of the play."--1989 Peabody Awards entry form.

This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.