A pair of special discussions accompany presentation of THE HAIRY APE at the Park Ave. Armory (photo by Manuel Harlan)
Park Ave. Armory, Veterans Room
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
Friday, March 31, and Friday, April 14, $15, 6:00
Play continues through April 22, $60-$195
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org
The Old Vic production of Eugene O’Neill’s 1922 play, The Hairy Ape, which was also made into a 1944 film starring William Bendix, Susan Hayward, Dorothy Comingore, and John Loder, has begun previews in the Park Ave. Armory’s Wade Thompson Drill Hall, prior to a March 30 opening; the show, starring Bobby Cannavale (in a role previously played onstage by such actors as Louis Wolheim, Paul Robeson, and Willem Dafoe) and directed by Richard Jones (Into the Woods, Too Clever by Half), runs through April 22. In conjunction with the play, the armory will be hosting two special events as part of its ongoing Conversation Series. On March 31 at 6:00 in the Veterans Room, the artist talk “A Hairy Ape for the 21st Century” will feature Jones, Cannavale, and O’Neill scholar and English professor Robert M. Dowling discussing the impact of the play nearly one hundred years after its debut. Two weeks later, on April 14 at 6:00, Catherine Combs (who plays Mildred), New-York Historical Society chief historian Valerie Paley, and theater arts and gender studies associate professor Erika Rundle will delve into “The Hairy Ape & New York City: Class vs. Identity.” O’Neill fans will also want to check out The Emperor Jones, continuing through April 23 at the Irish Rep, and Target Margin Theater’s six-hour revival of Mourning Becomes Electra, running April 26 to May 20.