Ensemble Theatre’s ‘The Hairy Ape’ powerful but not poetic

 

Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics

 

By the time he wrote “The Hairy Ape” in 1921, Eugene O’Neill had tired of the literary naturalism of his earlier work.  He was now venturing into a form of expressionism that inflates human pathos by layering characters’ speech with visceral and vivid poetry.

 

It’s this poetry that an otherwise solid Ensemble Theatre production of this play mismanages. 

 

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