June 21st will mark the 108th birthday of the late, legendary artist Al Hirschfeld. This month, to mark the occasion, The Al Hirschfeld Foundation celebrates the life and legacy of the artist with three special events.
The Hairy Ape follows the saga of Yank, a maritime laborer who questions his place in society when branded as 'a filthy beast' by the rich daughter of a steel industrialist. In a series of eight scenes, O'Neill chronicles Yank's struggle with 'the human condition,' caught somewhere between his own primitive nature and the more intellectually based-and emotionally vacant-upper classes. Rejected by the bourgeois of Fifth Avenue as well as his fellow workers, Yank finally seeks solace from the only creature with whom he finds kinship: an ape in the Central Park Zoo. The Provincetown Players premiered The Hairy Ape, O'Neill's sixth play, in March 1922 under the direction of frequent O'Neill collaborator Robert Edmond Jones. That production, featuring Louis Wolheim's powerful performance as Yank, moved that April to Broadway's Plymouth Theatre. In 1944, a film version of the play featured William Bendix and in the ensuing decades the play has received dozens of notable revivals around the country; perhaps the most celebrated of these was The Wooster Group's 1996 production, featuring Willem Dafoe as Yank.
Goodman Theatre Artistic Director Robert Falls and renowned actor Brian Dennehy bring their artistic partnership to new heights with Eugene O'Neill's haunting drama, Desire Under the Elms?marking their fifth collaboration on O'Neill's work over two decades. Falls' cast includes stage and screen stars Carla Gugino (Entourage, Spy Kids, Sin City) Pablo Schreiber (Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Awake and Sing!), Boris McGiver (The Wire) and Daniel Stewart Sherman (Broadway's Cyrano de Bergerac). The centerpiece production of Goodman Theatre's two-month 'A Global Exploration: Eugene O'Neill in the 21st Century,' Desire Under the Elms appears January 17 ? February 22 in the Goodman's 856-seat Albert Ivar Theatre. Tickets are $25 - 82.
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