Newsday (Nassau Edition) from Hempstead, New York • 115

B19 THEATER Direct From Manhattan SOUTH STREET RESTAURANT CAFE Regular Dinner Menu Abo Aualabk The Scene of the Grime plays the Selwyn PART 2 Dine Dance to the Cool Jazz Sounds of Frank Every Wfcd Thtfrs Fri St Sat REVIEW TIE HAMY APE Revival by ttw Wooster Group of the play by Eugene O'Neil Directed by Elizabeth LeCompte With WNem Dafoe Roy Faudree Paul Lazar Scot Renderer Dave Shelley Peyton Smith Kate Vak Set by Jim Clayburgh lighting by Jennifer Tipton music by John Lurie sound by James Johnson and John Collins video by Christopher Kondek and PhHp Bussman Selwyn Theater 229 42 St through May 25 Seen Friday Prix Fix Dinner Menull 95 Appetiztnt Baked Claim Saudi Same MuemreUa Square Fresh fiu It Cnckratf Sottpht Lobster Bisque Soup of die Day Honm Saled Ewlmn GRILLED NORWIGEAN SALMON mu NY CUT SIRLOIN STEAK nOhm a iMt kWni DOUBLE BREAST OF CHICKEN STUFFED a Hum Rooms wiA a WSU Mushmoai sauce PORK CHOPS uvrfi Appipadt BrmUy tmtex 9 OoMtu LINGUINI Whk sr CUsoot CALVES LIVER wdl fW Onmt SCTT VWyr ROASTED SKINLESS CHICKEN cm? Mo SHRIMP ARUGULA faM rm aho a nk(ST VEAL SCALLOPS OVER RIGITONIm Pk bm SMktt 9 Uarfe mmm BABY BROOK TROUT ihsu wA cm Msa -faiofa Lsm Bnwt SPICED HERB TUNASTEAK RAms rm sr Smm nww BROIL SOLE PAPPIETESw i Sot Has owe CHICKEN SHRIMP OVER SPINACH FETTUCINI uah IlffmMM AH above served with Apmriwfc Sous SNad Cnffre retd tour Ounce ufthrfai-Inwtne Ihrsserts: Rice Pudding wfwn whqqwd cream Ohm Flan Ice Omni Sorbet or Bread Ihaddmc wwtaakey sauce Not available Saturdays fc major Hnhdays AvsdaMe Sun-Thure Fri Ala Carte Menu Served Sun-Min 5 PM-11PM (HOHUCIHTS Appetivrs Shredded Row Duck $6 Same Tun Roll $7 GcupYiioii Friacc Sukid $5 Main Course: FREE RANGE CHICKEN BREAST GRILLED SALMON 15 How J3 MUMMMMIOo RACK OF LAMB PERSILLE20 BOMTEDRAOKURNOFPORIC By Jonathan Mandell STAFF WRITER SOUNDED like an inspired idea the Wooster Group in its Broadway debut casting longtime member Willem Dafoe in Eugene Hairy and presenting it in the decaying Selwyn Theater on 42nd Street which has not been used for a legitimate play since 1935 In movies ranging from to this English Dafoe who looks like a kind of prehistoric Henry Fonda has played updated Fonda-like characters potentially decent men spun around in the hellish centrifuge of contemporary life It makes sense for him to play the modem primitive Yank Smith a victim of that most common of current-day afflictions alienation in Hairy An earthy allegory that wrote in 1921 its characters themes or style influenced a range of now better-known plays including Streetcar Named of a even for It is clever to present this play at the Selwyn Theater a longtime seedy movie house between Broadway and Eighth Avenue whose lobby is being used as a tourist information center and which now has on its marquee a logo that makes the show look as if a horror movie The Selwyn still shares its entrance with the grandly named Grand Luncheonette the only establishment left over from the old 42nd Street a greasy spoon where the counterman who looks like an old sailor sells for $125 in front of signs that say "No and All this naturally brings forth memories of the kind 14 3882 SUNRISE HWY Jy of lowlifescastaways that once (meaning last inhabited the block loved such people hung out with them wrote about them: Hairy was inspired by a swaggering drinking buddy of his named Driscoll a stoker on a ship who to the astonishment committed suicide The Wooster Group the 20-year-old avant-garde company that normally operates out of the Performing Garage in Soho has taken over the smelly Selwyn and transformed it Members of the audience are directed not to the original seats but up to an enormous raised platform hovering halfway to the ceiling where rows of folding metal chairs slope down to a newly constructed stage The set continues the feel of makeshift construction a Wooster Group trademark contraption of dark metal beams and ban and video monitors But the Wooster Group characteristically has transformed the play into a visually arresting inventive and generally inaccessible theatrical experience that works best not as drama but as art installation It is only mildly surprising to learn that the production is officially designated part of the 1997 Whitney Biennial Much of it in fact comes off like performance art: Acton rush through their lines in a monotonous rant speaking into microphones or directly into a video camera their voices or images sometimes deliberately distorted There are the blinding lights and blackouts the clanking noises and eerie music that have long been avant-garde shorthand for the evils of technology Even the grime is stylized in the first few scenes face is painted a deep black like an What gets lost amid this swirl of dark expressionist imagery and loud theatricality is what exactly is going on If script is itself neither realistic nor especially easy there is nevertheless a dear plot Yank who makes his living shoveling coal into the boiler of an ocean liner revels in his life his work Jiis world feeling as one with the steel and the coal and the power of the engine But his world turns upside down when a young rich woman passenger descends into the hellish hold of the ship and seeing Yank recoils calling him a filthy beast From then on feeling dislocated and enraged Yank seeks revenge and at the same time tries to find a place to belong He is increasingly frustrated in both goals and finally reduced to seeking solace at the zoo where he attempts to embrace an actual hairy ape The ape hugs the life out of him him think I Yank Bays as he lies dying in the cage himself tried to explain why both critics and audiences responded so favorably to this unusual work when it was first produced The audience he said "had been appeided to through their rather than their intellect The Wooster Group production for all its eye-catching intelligence keeps the characters a an emotional distance from us its theatrical look at alienation thus itself likely to alienate more than it engages Dave Shelley left 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