The word belong becomes an obsession for stoker Yank (Jon Beavers) in Eugene O’Neill’s 1922 play The Hairy Ape. Yank has spent his life shoveling coal on a transatlantic liner, and he is the tallest and seemingly strongest of the men doing that work in Ciarán O’Reilly’s engrossing production at the Irish Rep. Yank sees himself as the solid foundation of the entire society, but when a socialite visits the stokehold, it launches him on a downward spiral. He becomes obsessed with the idea that she could look at him only as a “hairy ape.”