The Hairy Ape
Percussively driving points home, a recent ------- production of The Hairy Ape, an 87-year-old play by Eugene O’Neill, begs the question, what’s happening to our American Culture now?
O’Neill’s play about belonging, identity, self-worth, ignorance, class, robber barons and capitalism in danger of becoming feudalism resonates as much today as it must have in 1922 when it was first produced by the Provincetown Players. This is not surprising when viewed along side the following news:
"Income inequality in the United States is at an all-time high, surpassing even levels seen during the Great Depression," according to a recently updated paper by University of California, Berkeley Professor Emmanuel Saez. The paper, which covers data through 2007, points to a staggering, unprecedented disparity in American incomes. On his blog, Nobel prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman called the numbers "truly amazing.
"Though income inequality has been growing for some time, the paper paints a stark, disturbing portrait of wealth distribution in America. As of 2007, the top decile of American earners, Saez writes, pulled in 49.7 percent of total wages, a level that's "higher than any other year since 1917 and even surpasses 1928, the peak of stock market bubble in the 'roaring" 1920s.'"
Written in 1921 and telling the story of a laborer, Yank, powerfully characterized in the production by ------- as a rough and tough--stripped to the waist--yet vulnerable man unable to think through the complexities of life while yearning to belong, the play opens in the coal furnace hellhole of a transatlantic ocean liner.
As he searches for a sense of belonging in a world controlled by the rich, Yank, at first with cocky, brutish confidence bellows in his strength, I‘m what makes iron into steel. I’m at the bottom, get me? Dere ain’t nothin’ foither. I’m the end! I’m the start! I start something and the woild moves. I’m steam and oil for the engines. I’m the ting in noise that makes yuh hear it; I’m smoke and express trains and steamers and factory whistles; I’m the ting in gold that makes it money.
"Slaves hell! We run the whole woiks. All the rich guys dat tink dey’re somep’n, dey ain’t nothin’. Dey don’t belong. But us guys, we’re in de move, we’re at the bottom, the whole ting is us!"
Juxtaposed against the stokehole, the second scene opens in the fresh sea air on the promenade of the ocean liner--freedom as far as the eyes can see--where dressed in all white Mildred Douglass, adroitly played by -------, the granddaughter of a coal stoker who became a Robber Barron bemoans her position in life. "I would like to be of some use in the world. Is it my fault I don’t know how? I would like to be sincere, to touch life somewhere. But I’m afraid I have neither the vitality nor integrity. All that was burnt out in our stock before I was born. I’m a waste product in the Bessemer process. Or rather, I inherited the acquired trait of the by-product, wealth, but none of the energy, none of the strength of the steel that made it. I am sired by gold and damned by it, as they say at the race track—damned in more ways than one."
Wanting to assuage her curiosity of where her wealthy grandfather began as a furnace stoker, Mildred persuades the ship’s Second Engineer to take her down into the belly of the ship where she encounters Yank. She screams "filthy beast" and faints. Yank is demoralized. He and his co-firemen can’t ‘tink’ it through. Agonizing over the insult, Yank can’t let it go; anger eventually overwhelms him, he’s powerless. It’s an anger born of ignorance.
Is this primal, repressive anger reflective of what we see at some Town Hall healthcare meetings today? What motivates a man to stand up and fiercely yell, "Keep the government’s hands off my Medicare?
Katie Couric of CBS News recently denounced the "fear and frankly ignorance" that is driving people to town-hall forums on health care in her "Notebook" segment.
She expressed alarm that the debate has stirred up a hornet's nest and has "uncovered disturbing attitudes and emotions that have nothing to do with policy. Are we really still debating health care when a man brings a handgun to a church where the President is speaking?"
Yank, feeling threatened, wants revenge, to get even, to be heard, but mostly he desires to understand his place and fate in life, to belong. Perhaps, like Yank, today’s Medicare screamer wants peace of mind, to touch life somewhere--to be heard, too.
As the play progresses, persecuting himself, Yank wanders into Manhatten, is rejected by everyone, even the labor organizers--can’t remember his given name when asked--and ends up at the Zoo’s gorilla cage. He praises the gorilla for being on the bottom, "Sure, yuh’re de best off! Yuh can’t tink."
Yank frees the gorilla and dies where he belongs in the Hairy Ape’s crushing embrace.
From the graves of Sinclair's Jungle, the monkeys cry again, a whimpering wail.
The most impressive ------ production, produced on a ten-cent budget, featured a creative, minimalist set design worthy of any New York production and the percussive score by ------ brought the ship to life; in all, a splendid production, courageously staged by ------ The best production I’ve seen in years.