Capitalism Gone Bananas- WUDS’ Hairy Ape Review

Riding off of recent success at the National Student Drama Festival in Scarborough in their production of Jim Cartwright’s Road, WUDS have struck gold again with seamless production and outstanding acting skill in The Hairy Ape.

Under the direction of Maddy Murray and the strong acting leadership of Stuart Nunn (of Sweeney Todd fame), they make a meal out of Eugene O’Neill’s challenging drama. It tells the story of Yank, a comrade stuck in the Machine (and literally, in the hellish stoke room of a cruise-liner) in a 1920s New York city. And this production certainly is roaring… if a little bit bananas. The German expressionism that underlines the whole of the piece is brought out in the light and shadow of torches, the insanity of the acting tribe and the absurdly Grotowskian movement, yet I feel that Murray’s excellent conception of the piece is let down entirely by O’Neill’s script.

Within the script itself, O’Neill covers a range of issues, such as capitalism, Marxism, religion, the modern Machine (which the choreography beautifully illustrates) and indeed Yank’s struggle to find his own sense of belonging in this shifting world. Yet it is impossible to forget the other literature circulating at the time O’Neill was writing, specifically Death of a Salesman and Of Mice and Men. If you studied these texts in high school than you cannot fail to miss the overplayed references towards “yellow bellies”, and the central character of Yank, who bears a striking resemblance to Lennie and constantly calls his apish ensemble “comrades!”. Although it would be impossible to accuse O’Neill of plagiarism (as his book was published fifteen years before Steinbeck) the overcooked concepts and clichés that dig up on the issue of capitalism, again, made it difficult for me to relate to the story line.

What is undeniable, however, is the professionalism and the deep artistry with which Murray and her team have engaged with. The energy of the actor’s bodies is constant across all eight scenes, with a particularly strong performance from main man Nunn. The sarcasm with which O’Neill portrays the Manhattan upper classes is picked up in the superb delivery of Mildred and Aunt played by Lucy Ogilvie and Phoebe McIndoe. Indeed the crazy combinations of props are shown to be as mad as the screaming furore on the balcony, especially in combination of the set, which, though sparse and holding some sense of the Orwellian, adds to the sense of eerie insanity.

The choreography in particular is something that cannot be missed, not only in the wild energy of the monkey ensemble, but particularly in the two short dance pieces which show us that whether above or below deck, we are all a part of the Machine, we are all hairy apes.

It is the perfect student piece in that it combines complex political truths with drunken dancing, singing and general madness- the perfect dichotomy of any student life. And although personally O’Neill’s script was hard to engage with, the undeniable strength of the performance illustrates exactly why Warwick Drama won eight awards at the National Student Drama Festival.

WUDS’ The Hairy Ape will be on in the studio at the Arts Centre until Saturday 10^th April with tickets priced at £7 for students.