The Hairy Ape - A Comedy of Ancient and Modern Life

The play tells the story of a brutish, unthinking laborer known as Yank, as he searches for a sense of belonging in a world controlled by the rich.

O'Neill himself acknowledged that The Hairy Ape straddles a number of styles. "It seems to run the gamut from extreme naturalism to extreme expressionism—with more of the latter than the former," he wrote in 1921. The initial response to productions of The Hairy Ape focused on the skill of the play's staging and its forceful impact on a viewer.