The reviews are in for The Hairy Ape, Eugene O’Neill’s 1922 expressionist drama about Yank, a ship’s stoker whose certainty that he belongs collapses after a rich young woman calls him a filthy beast. Ciarán O’Reilly’s revival at the Irish Repertory Theatre, with Jon Beavers making his New York stage debut as Yank, opened on October 4. Most of the critics find the century-old play newly pointed about class and work, and TheaterMania and Culture Sauce hail Beavers’s performance as a breakout. The dissenters are Time Out New York, which does not recommend it, and New York Stage Review’s Michael Sommers, who found Beavers adequate rather than compelling.
The verdict: seven reviews so far. Two carry a star score, Culture Sauce at 4 out of 5 and New York Stage Review at 3, an average of 3.5 among the outlets that score; Time Out New York rates the production “not recommended,” and the rest publish no rating. Nearly everyone admires Charlie Corcoran’s rising and falling set and the stokers’ ensemble work, and John Keating’s Paddy is praised throughout; opinion on Jon Beavers’s Yank runs from riveting to merely adequate.
What are critics saying about The Hairy Ape?
Vulture
"Still Stoking the Class Struggle: O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape"
Reviewer: Sara Holdren
Sara Holdren thinks O’Reilly is right to treat the play as the spiky comedy O’Neill called it, and finds its portrait of an insular, wounded masculinity painfully current.
"a swift, sturdy, smaller-scale revival that now feels unnervingly on-the-pulse."
She notes that the energy dips during Yank’s journey ashore and that the Fifth Avenue scene is more chintzy than chilling, but credits Beavers with carrying the evening to its end.
Time Out New York
Reviewer: Sandy MacDonald · Not recommended
Sandy MacDonald credits Beavers with hitting both of Yank’s notes, the boasting and the grievance, with real vigor, and enjoys Keating’s early reverie about the old sailing ships.
"the passage of more than a century has not greatly improved the work’s luster."
She finds the shifts of mood handled unevenly on the Irish Rep’s small stage, and thinks the production marches rather dully through O’Neill’s long soliloquies to its foregone end.
TheaterMania
"Eugene O’Neill’s Century-Old Prophecy of America’s Coming Identity Crisis"
Reviewer: Zachary Stewart
Zachary Stewart calls the revival thrilling, praising its period design, its brutally efficient staging and a supporting cast that is excellent all around.
"Beavers makes a heroic New York debut, embodying Yank’s gruff, uncompromising masculinity"
He reads the play as a warning for an age of artificial intelligence, when many more of us may find our work, and our sense of belonging, taken away.
New York Stage Review
"Jon Beavers depicts a primitive man lost in the civilized world in Irish Rep’s revival of an early O’Neill classic"
Reviewer: Michael Sommers · 3 out of 5
Michael Sommers admires the expert design and the ensemble, who mesh their bodies and voices well in the play’s expressionist passages.
"a smart, capable staging by Ciarán O’Reilly, the one-act play packs plenty of drama in 90 minutes."
At the preview he attended, though, the crucial stokehold encounter did not land, and he found Beavers adequate but not especially compelling. New York Stage Review also ran a second three-star notice, from David Finkle, who rates the production as only moderately successful.
Culture Sauce
"Stokes a century-old class war with a star turn by Jon Beavers"
Reviewer: Thom Geier · 4 out of 5
Thom Geier calls the revival stylish and timely, and singles out the clever two-level set and the lighting and sound that conjure the heat of the stokehole.
"Beavers, who captures Yank’s brutishness but also his resentment at being seen as just a brute."
His one reservation is Elizabeth Teeter’s Mildred, whom he finds overplayed, and he admits a schematic streak in O’Neill’s writing.
Theater Pizzazz
"Fierce"
Reviewer: Alix Cohen
Alix Cohen is full of praise for the sets, the lighting and O’Reilly’s imaginative direction, which evokes the mechanization of the men below deck through rhythm and synchronized movement.
"Irish Rep’s innovative production approaches the story on both visceral and visual levels."
She finds the play pointedly relevant in the age of AI, and says Keating makes every moment of Paddy come alive.
Off Off Online
Reviewer: Edward Karam
Edward Karam calls the production engrossing, and credits a sterling cast with making O’Neill’s thick dialects comprehensible, while praising the costumes, the lighting and the movement work.
"his performance seethes with vitality and rising scorn: he’s riveting. All in all, O’Neill has been treated admirably."
His one quibble is that the stokers look less like O’Neill’s hairy-chested crew than a gym-toned cast.
For more of what the New York critics have been saying, read our roundups for Kramer/Fauci at St. Ann’s Warehouse and Slam Frank at the Orpheum Theatre.
The Hairy Ape runs at the Irish Repertory Theatre, 132 West 22nd Street, through November 15, 2026. The running time is 90 minutes, with no intermission. Production photos by Carol Rosegg.
