The Hairy Ape

EgoPo Classic Theater caps off their American playwright series this season with a rowdy and intense production of Eugene O'Neill's "The Hairy Ape." When the play was originally produced in 1922 by The Providence Players, O'Neill's excoriating themes must have it must have torn a whole through the consciousness of audiences.

It is in fact a theatrical primal scream about the injustices of corporate wealth and the exploited dreams of the working class. Indeed, it resonates still. Brenna Geffers' inventive direction maintains and a fine ensemble maintains its razor-sharp edge.

Set designer Tom Weaver converts the second floor theater space at the Latvian Society into the gritty stoker hold of an ocean liner where Yank, is a lonely roughneck leader of the crew whose passions burn as hot in his passions as the fuel they are shoveling in the furnace to keep the ship 'yar.' The crew is a tight band of workers keeping and when they are not wielding shovels or the fixing the engine gears, they are collapsed, staying drunk and carousing with barroom camaraderie.

Yank brags that he is the strongest, the "steel and muscle" as he puts it, that keeps the liner speeding along. Paddy is the broken-back old salt who gives up such ship of dreams. Yank tries to push his tired disillusionments aside, but Paddy's humanity threatens Yank's brio.

When Mildred, on board the ship with her aunt, is bored and wants to see the workers below, she is horrified at the inhumane conditions. When Yank takes in her gaze, he thinks she sees him as a dirty, hulking, hairy beast existing to work for the rich. He implodes.

When the crew strips down to shower because the soot and grease from the boilers will literally get into their skin, the cast moves around with such naturalness, as a near naked Yank doesn't get under the shower barking to the others that he needs "to think." The hostility of his reaction to this woman has Paddy and the rest of the crew accusing him of being in love.

Throughout, Geffers taps into EgoPo's fine sense of 'physical theater' and this cast is fully on board. When Yank is face to face with Mildred, Geffers stops time the moment, for instance, Geffers stops time and choreographs a mosaic of what could be going through their heads, and it is a heartbreakingly poignant and funny sequence.

The surreality continues in the second act when the engineer gets Yank on 5th Avenue looking for the daughter to confront her, they end up at a workers union hall and the zoo where Yank sees his life closer to those of the caged apes than a free man.

Steven Wright's is a tragic and soulful Paddy, Yank's perfect understated foil. Langston Darby is great as the rough and ready socialist engineer, who can give as good as she gets and gets Yank to see the world as a rigged game of class. O'Neill's dialogue is heavy mixtures of �migr� New Yorker, delivered with precision by this cast, so you hear the rapid-fire exchanges, almost musically. The artifice that is sometimes dialectically symphonic in fact.

Yank's dock side tough guy Brooklynese 'youse guys' out -Cagneys Jimmy Cagney as written and as delivered in nothing less than an electrifying performance by Matteo Scammell, who is, indeed all steel and muscle. Critically, Scammell measures out the poetic interiors of Yank's torment that reveal his truth that "I don't belong."

EgoPo just announced that they are continuing their dynamic American playwright series into next season featuring all women playwrights.

"The Hairy Ape" runs through April 26 at the Latvian Society, 7th & Spring Garden St. Philadelphia. For information or tickets, call 267-273-1414 or visit www.egopo.org