In this review, which was originally published on March 10,1922, Woolcott states that despite the usual flaws that one comes to expect in the work of O'Neill, The Hairy Ape is a stunning piece of theatre with at least "a little greatness" to it.
The little theatre of the Provincetownsmen in Macdougal Street was packed to the doors with astonishment last evening as scene after scene unfolded in the new play by Eugene O'Neill. This was The Hairy Ape, a bitter, brutal, wildly fantastic play of nightmare hue and nightmare distortion. It is a monstrously uneven piece, now flamingly eloquent, now choked and thwarted and inarticulate. Like most of his writing for the theatre, it is the worse here and there for the lack of a fierce, unintimidated blue pencil. But it has a little greatness.....
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