What is The Iceman Cometh About and Why Should I Care?
And, believe it or not, it’s also really funny at times. Plus, it features what many consider one of the most unique, fascinating, crazy characters in American theater in the form of the traveling salesman Hickey. Yep, the play continues to draw in audiences with its warts-and-all look at a group of down-and-out drunks desperately trying to find something to keep them going. Theater companies gutsy and/or crazy enough to perform it nonetheless often find that its haunting view of the American Dream plays as well with modern audiences as it did with the audiences of the 1940s. While its four-hour running time has nothing on the LOTR trilogy, it’s still pretty long for a non-Wagnerian play, and therefore rarely staged. Not bad for a guy who dropped out of college and roamed the seas for a while.įor its part, Iceman inspired movie and TV adaptations, Broadway revivals, and countless regional productions. In his time, he earned a Pulitzer Drama and the Nobel Prize for literature. The Iceman Cometh, along with his other works like A Long Day’s Journey into Night, garnered Eugene O’Neill the title of the Father of American Drama, and he remains one of the most respected American playwrights ever.
As is often the case with the works of O’Neill, though, the characters discover that the thing they hoped for never turns out quite like they thought it would. Written in 1939, first performed on Broadway in 1946, and set in 1912, O’Neill’s drama focuses on a group of down-and-outers who spend their time drinking, sleeping, dreaming of “tomorrow,” and waiting for a man named Hickey to arrive and brighten up their lives. While nothing like that turns up in Eugene O’Neill’s classic play The Iceman Cometh, there are plenty of anarchists, prostitutes, and military heroes to keep things interesting.
For many, “Iceman” conjures images of a freeze-happy member of the X-Men or an awesome Top Gun fighter pilot played by Val Kilmer.
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