Eugene O’Neill’s expressionistic allegory is not often revived by the commercial theatre and was last seen in London in a visually stunning German production by Peter Stein with huge sets at the National Theatre 25 years ago.
Yank, a brutish and brutalized stoker on a transatlantic liner, is, says O’Neil, “a symbol of man who has lost all harmony with nature, the harmony he used to have as an animal and has not yet acquired in a spiritual way.” Yank has an identity crisis when a rich socialite, dressed all in white and looking to him like an angel or an apparition, calls him a filthy beast. He determines to get even with society, but he fails miserably and is beaten up by the police and rejected by the workers’ union.
The text is a bitter indictment of class divisions and the way society dehumanises and alienates the working classes, who working in appalling conditions are treated as if they were animals in cages. The play was denounced at its premiere in 1922 as socialist propaganda and therefore subversive and un American. The New York police (no doubt not liking the way they were portrayed) described the production as obscene, indecent and impure.
Kate Budgen’s 90-minute muscular, sweaty, gritty revival, acted on a traverse, has a harsh, metallic quality and produces some striking images, the most powerful being the one with the stokers shoveling in the coal in unison, feeding the voracious sexual appetite of the roaring furnace,