Theatre: The Iceman Cometh (with Denzel Washington, Colm Meany, David Morse) (May 2018)

The Iceman Cometh is a Eugene O'Neill play written in 1939. The play premiered on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre in 1946, where it ran for 136 performances before closing on in 1947. Denzel Washington stars as Hickey, Tammy Blanchard as Cora (Moneyball, Blue Jasmine, The Good Shepherd), Frank Wood as Cecil Lewis (Detroit, Gold, Changeling, Michael Clayton), Bill Irwin as Ed Mosher, Reg Rogers as James Cameron (Runaway Bride, Primal Fear), Colm Meaney as Harry Hope (Layer Cake, Die Hard, Last of the Mohicans, Con Air, Far and Away), and David Morse (Proof of Life, The Green Mile, Disturbia, Hurt Locker, Treme, House, St Elsewhere) as Larry Slade.
The title (The Iceman Cometh) refers to a running gag between Hickey and the dead-enders about coming home after traveling his sales route to find his wife "rolling in the hay with the iceman" (akin to the contemporary joke about the "milkman"). In reality, he has murdered her. Confessing his crime, he must confront the consequences, including the prospect of execution. Therefore, the "iceman" seems a metaphor for the dissolution of the characters' pipe dreams through death, perhaps the only way they can relinquish them due to their dependence upon them to sustain hope.
The central contention of the play is the human need for self-deceptions or “pipe dreams" in order to carry on with life: to abandon them or to see them for the lies that they are is to risk death. It is in this context that the story concludes with Larry Slade calling himself “the only real convert to death Hickey made here” as a response to witnessing Parritt’s suicidal leap from the roof. Having stopped lying to himself and come to terms with his real motivation behind informing on his mother and her west coast anarchist group, Parritt can no longer live with himself and dies, while Slade continues lying to himself and thereby lives.
The play contains many allusions to political topics, particularly anarchism and socialism. Hugo, Larry, and Don are former members of an anarchist movement. Two other characters are veterans of the Second Boer War. (One is British, and one is Afrikaans.) They alternately defend and insult each other, and there are many allusions to events in South Africa. Both wish to return to their home countries, but their families do not want them there. Joe is an African American character, and makes several speeches about racial differences.
Synopsis
The Iceman Cometh is set in New York in 1912 in Harry Hope's down-market Greenwich Village saloon and rooming house. The patrons, twelve men and three female prostitutes, are dead-end alcoholics who spend every possible moment seeking oblivion in each other's company and trying to con or wheedle free drinks from Harry and the bartenders. They drift without purpose from day to day, coming fully to life only during the semi-annual visits of the salesman Theodore Hickman, known to them as Hickey. When Hickey finishes a tour of his business territory, which is apparently a wide expanse of the East Coast, he typically turns up at the saloon and starts the party. As the play opens, the regulars are expecting Hickey to arrive in time for Harry's birthday party. The first act introduces the various characters and shows their bickering among themselves, showing just how drunk and delusional they are, all the while awaiting Hickey.
Joe Mott insists that he will re-open his casino. The English Cecil "The Captain" Lewis and South African Piet "The General" Wetjoen, who fought each other during the Boer War, are now good friends, and both insist that they'll return to their nations of origin. Harry Hope has not left the bar since his wife Bess's death 20 years ago. He promises that he'll walk around the block on his birthday, which is the next day. Pat McGloin says he is hoping to be reinstated into the police force, but is waiting for the right moment. Ed Mosher prides himself on his ability to give incorrect change, but he kept too much of his illegitimate profits to himself and was fired; he says he will get his job back someday. Hugo Kalmar is drunk and passed out for most of the play; when he is conscious, he pesters the other patrons to buy him a drink. Chuck Morello says that he will marry Cora tomorrow. Larry Slade is a former anarchist who looks pityingly on the rest. Don Parritt is also a former anarchist who shows up later in the play to talk about his mother (Larry's ex-girlfriend) to Larry and specifically her arrest due to her involvement in the anarchist movement.
Finally Hickey arrives, and his behavior throws the other characters into turmoil. He insists, with as much charisma as ever, that he sees life clearly now as never before because he no longer drinks. Hickey wants the characters to cast away their delusions and accept that their heavy drinking and inaction means that their hopes will never be fulfilled. He takes on this task with a near-maniacal fervor. How he goes about his mission, how the other characters respond, and their efforts to find out what has wrought this change in Hickey take over four hours to resolve. During and after Harry's birthday party, most seem to have been somewhat affected by Hickey's ramblings. Larry pretends to be unaffected but, when Don reveals he was the informant responsible for the arrest of his own mother (Larry's former girlfriend), Larry rages at him; Willie decides McGloin's appeal will be his first case, and Rocky admits he is a pimp.
Most of the men Hickey talked with do go out into the world - dressed up, hopeful of turning their lives around — but they fail to make any progress. Eventually, they return and are jolted by a sudden revelation. Hickey, who had earlier told the other characters first that his wife had died and then that she was murdered, admits that he is the one who killed her. The police arrive, apparently called by Hickey himself, to arrest Hickey and Hickey justifies the murder in a dramatic monologue, saying that he did it out of love for her. He relates that Hickey's father was a preacher in the backwoods of Indiana. Evidently he was both charismatic and persuasive, and it was his inheriting these traits which led Hickey to become a salesman. An angry kid trapped in a small town, Hickey had no use for anyone but his sweetheart, Evelyn. Evelyn's family forbade her to associate with Hickey, but she ignored them. After Hickey left to become a salesman, he promised he would marry Evelyn when he was able. He became a successful salesman, then sent for her and the two were very happy until Hickey became increasingly guilty following his wife's constant forgiveness of his infidelities and drinking. He then recounts how he murdered her to free her from the pain of his persistent philandering and drinking because she loved him too much to live apart from him. But, in retelling the murder, he laughs and tells Evelyn, "well, you know what you can do with that pipe dream now, don't you?" In realizing he said this, Hickey breaks down completely. He realizes that he went truly insane and that people need their empty dreams to keep existing. The others agree and decide to testify to his insanity during Hickey's trial despite Hickey's begging them to let him get the death sentence. He no longer wishes to live now that he has no illusions about life.
They return to their empty promises and pipe dreams except for Parritt, who runs to his room and jumps off the fire escape, unable to live with the knowledge of what he has done to his mother after discarding the last of his lies about his action and motivation for it. He first claims that he did it due to patriotism and then for money, but finally admits he did it because he hated his mother, who was so obsessed with her own freedom of action that she became self-centered and alternately ignored or dominated him. Despite witnessing the young man's fatal leap, and acknowledging the futility of his own situation ("by God, there's no hope! I'll never be a success...Life is too much for me!"), Larry fears death as much as life and is consequently left in limbo.
Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre
Originally called the Royale Theatre, it was unusual for its eclectic, romantic style that its designers called Spanish modern. Built in 1927 along with the Majestic Theatre, the Golden Theatre, and the Hotel Lincoln (now the Milford Plaza), the cluster of venues completed the blocks on 44th and 45th Streets between Broadway and 7th Avenue, creating the densest concentration of legitimate theaters in New York City. In 2005, the Royale was renamed the Bernard B. Jacobs after the longtime president of the Shubert Organization. The lavish interior was designed by an architect for Czar Nicholas II in Russia, who came to America. Melzer hired a Hungarian artist to create a series of murals entitled "Spanish Lovers" for the interior of the theater. 













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