1998: A London production featuring Kevin Spacey had a successful and critically acclaimed run through 1998 and 1999 at the Almeida Theatre and the Old Vic in London. 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?" Sound designer: Dan Moses Shreier It ran from September 29, 1985, to December 1, 1985. However, any comparison is less about one production being superior to another than whether this is a play that rewards being seen multiple times in close succession. An angry kid trapped in a small town, Hickey had no use for anyone but his sweetheart, Evelyn. The Iceman Cometh is also about a family of sorts, the community that's been established around Harry Hope's waterfront bar and SRO flophouse. First published in 1946, the play premiered on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre on October 9, 1946, directed by Eddie Dowling, where it ran for 136 performances before closing on March 15, 1947. In addition to streamlining the drama by almost an hour, Wolfe's approach to it is less punishing. He relates that his father was a preacher in the backwoods of Indiana. They are thrown when Hickey shows up, bringing the party as usual, but also a hectoring conscience, urging them all to relinquish their delusions and embrace the liberating acceptance of their failings. There’s the ex-circus con man (Bill Irwin), the Boer War veterans (Frank Wood, Dakin Matthews), the ever procrastinating Jimmy Tomorrow (Reg Rogers), the black gambling man (Michael Potts) accepted by this gang for seeming “white”, several “tarts” (Tammy Blanchard, Carolyn Braver, Nina Grollman) who lash out when called hookers by tossing “pimp” at the joint’s barkeep (Danny McCarthy). With all the insistence and back-patting of a born salesman, Hickey assures them that he, too, has found salvation by facing and abandoning the central lie of his life: He no longer blames his wife’s imagined infidelity (with the anonymous “iceman” of the title) for his own drunken carousing and womanizing. We want to hear from you! That seasoned ensemble had first performed the play three years prior at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, so by the time they reached New York their characters were like second skins, stained by smoke and liquor. The Iceman Cometh I'd get blind to world now if it was the Iceman of Death himself treating! Some audiences no doubt will find the sometimes-clunky drama's inherent lethargy hard work. The director is more attuned to the sardonic humor masking the desolation, thereby softening the dread. [21], 1973: A film adaptation as part of the American Film Theatre directed by John Frankenheimer. The drunkards, living in … There are some variations in words or word order in ordinary speech that differ from the published text. David Morse brings a burly presence and haunted intensity to the difficult role of Larry Slade, a former syndicalist-anarchist so disillusioned with the failure of the movement that he'd just as soon be dead.