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The Iceman Cometh

2013; Penn State University Press; Volume: 34; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/eugeoneirevi.34.1.0117

2161-4318

Sara Gerend,

Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinary Research

As the lights dim in Chicago's Goodman Theatre, a nearby audience member jokes that he put on incontinence undergarments in preparation for the night's marathon viewing. At four hours and forty-five minutes, Robert Falls's revisitation of The Iceman Cometh (he first directed it at the Goodman in 1990) demands physical and mental stamina from theatergoers as well as the eighteen-member cast, most of whom occupy the stage for the majority of the play. Despite requiring endurance, Falls's latest rendition of Eugene O'Neill's classic amply rewards. With numerous absorbing performances and an increasingly haunting set, Iceman flies by like a rollercoaster ride of thrilling comedic highs and stomach-churning lows. Along with the down-and-out denizens of Harry Hope's saloon, viewers wait in growing anticipation for the traveling salesman Theodore Hickman, “Hickey,” played by Nathan Lane, whose arrival animates, unsettles, and threatens to destroy.A two-time Tony Award recipient, brilliant comedic actor, and surprisingly short man, Lane seems at first an odd choice for the titanic figure of Hickey. With a stage appearance of three and a half hours and multiple tragic monologues, O'Neill's central character holds challenges for any actor. Jason Robards Jr. pioneered the first successful salesman in José Quintero's 1956 revival of The Iceman Cometh. Reviewers praised Robards's Hickey whose cool façade of affability barely concealed a roiling undercurrent of anxiety, a complex rendition that forced a critical reevaluation of O'Neill's drama as a tragedy. Other notable performances of Hickey included Lee Marvin's coarse, devilish tough-guy approach in John Frankenheimer's 1973 film version and, in the same year, James Earl Jones's take on the character's possible insanity as the first African American Hickey at the Circle in the Square Theater. Most recently, in a 1999 staging in London and New York, Kevin Spacey received accolades for his fast-talking Hickman, whose powers of insinuation slowly unveiled the character as a multi-layered, tortured soul.From the moment Lane's Hickey bursts upon the stage late in act 1, he packs his interpretation with an infectious energy and dynamism. As Lane skates across the stage, clasping hands, patting backs, and acknowledging each broken barfly with a simple word or gesture, the audience leans forward. Who is this dapper, roly-poly drummer in the pinstriped suit, glowing with such good cheer that his eyebrows grin? And how is his mere pomaded presence able to resuscitate the slumbering pub? Indeed, in Falls's rendition, Lane's vibrancy cannot be severed from the ensemble cast's contrasting collective performance. As the bleary eyes, drooping heads, and withered torsos of the tavern-goers turn toward Hickey, his magnetism multiplies. Weaving with ease between the tables, Lane works the stirring crowd with a honeyed tongue suddenly larger than his five feet, five inches. Even in act 2, when Hickey begins to gently harangue the inebriated inhabitants to abandon their pipe dreams and they curl visibly away, averting gazes and sidling against the saloon walls, the audience feels the respect and admiration these drunks still hold for their yearly visitor.The sentiment is clearly reciprocated, for unlike Marvin's malevolent Hickey, Lane's salesman is insistent, yet caring in his approach. Like a preacher, he exclaims his newfound convictions with fervor but rests a reassuring hand on each sinner, striving to convert his flock to a life without illusions by invading their conscious minds without malice. When the wounded outcasts begin to sober, look inward, and then lash out in anger at the businessman and at one another, theatergoers squirm in their seats. Strangely, however, Lane's missionary zeal does not make the audience wish to banish him. Instead, this Hickey, even in the company of half-adoring disciples, casts a charming spell, making viewers long to witness this man in his former happy-go-lucky holiday mode. If a clearly changed Hickey can convince his outcast friends to confront their inner demons now, what powers of persuasion must he have held in the past?By the third act, Lane's movements minimize and, like a deft puppet-master, he seems to pull invisible strings, prompting one reluctant recluse after another to zigzag out of the tavern. But as the drama's catalyst, Hickey enjoys a short-lived triumph. When an ashen, unshaven Harry Hope, played with superb rascality by Canadian actor Stephen Ouimette, wafts back into the bar, viewers sense the inevitable return of the others. Then, in contrast to his mammoth predecessor Robards, whose act 4 monologue comes across as musical, with a voice switching seamlessly between lilting comedy and raw tragedy, Lane's confession slowly thunders. As his temper boils, burning off his amiable veneer, Lane's Hickman paces the stage steaming and spitting. Speaking with the rapidity of Spacey's salesman, Lane rolls up his sleeves, exclaims wildly with his arms, and pounds balled fists into sweaty palms, hammering home his narrative about Evelyn as though striving to sell his story to the most stubborn customer of his career: himself. Although Lane's tragic Hickman cannot quite compete with the charisma of his genial performance, it is harrowing to observe the actor's transformation from a carnival huckster to a volcanic core of sulfurous rage. Furthermore, in contrast to the reaction to Jones's performance, the audience never questions this Hickey's sanity. Lane simply conveys an ordinary, though gifted, businessman turned criminal who accidentally exposes the truth buried deep within his own elaborate illusions and then claims “madness” to cover his revelation up again.Alongside Lane, the actor who most anchors Falls's production is Brian Dennehy as Larry Slade. A giant of a man, Dennehy towers above the slumped, somnolent bodies sprawled in Hope's back room. As each crazy alcoholic comes to life, Dennehy's “old foolosopher,” sitting in his “grandstand” as still and imposing as an idol, pronounces utter lunacy on the scene, but with arms crossed in a stained long-sleeved undershirt, this one-time syndicalist-anarchist looks, at times, as though he is the one in a straightjacket. In contrast to Dennehy's 1990 Goodman performance of Theodore Hickman in which he displayed a whole gamut of emotions, the actor's take on Larry is minimalist. He conveys the old man's profound mental alteration with a few physical cues: a bowed head, a furrowed brow. And since he never leaves the stage, the audience identifies forcefully with this character's transformation; Dennehy's Larry roots himself in the viewers' imaginations long after Iceman has ended.Other strong ensemble performances include John Douglas Thompson as Joe Mott who enacts a robust, joyful drunk whose growing racial consciousness throws him on the defensive, and Salvatore Inzerillo as barman Rocky Pioggi who engages in dopey, affectionate exchanges with his saucy streetwalking “stable.” In addition, Lee Wilkof as the bespectacled ex-anarchist Hugo Kalmar punctuates the stagnant saloon with deliciously muddled, revolutionary outbursts. The only performance that disappoints is Patrick Andrews as Don Parritt. Although Andrews captures the uncertain and increasingly irritating presence of the young man, his voice fails to consistently project and his words often trip over one another, impeding clarity. When set against the parallel plot of Hickey's unfolding hatred for his angelic wife, Parritt's confession of premeditation in the imprisonment of his mother feels flat and forced. The heavy thud of his offstage suicide should shock more.Throughout the latter half of Iceman, Kevin Depinet's set designs draw the audience into the characters' mental states. In act 3, Hope's bar, mottled a mossy, cave-like gray stretches deep upstage, underlining distance and impossibility. Indeed, viewers feel along with O'Neill's bums that the outside world exists in another time and universe. Moreover with an oak bar as imposing as an altar and two cathedral-paned double doors brightly backlit as though by heaven itself, the setting screams that this dark hellhole, incubator of pipe dreams, is the only place these booze-hounds will ever worship. In act 4, the mood turns somber and muted. As moonlight pools onto a black stage from a single second-story window, Depinet creates a feeling of utter isolation. The prison-like design reflects the seclusion of the hobos who now sit alone, eyes locked on bottles of lifeless liquor.At the play's conclusion, a collapsed Larry stands on one side of the stage like a vulture, his mostly bald head hanging deep between his massive shoulder blades. As he feasts inwardly on death, the oblivious bar crowd reunites, clinking mugs and cackling with laughter. As the playwright's investigation into the lower depths ends, Falls invites viewers to look one last time “with pity on the two sides” and challenges them to consider life lived both with and without what O'Neill considers humankind's most potent, sometimes necessary, and endlessly self-administered narcotic—its illusions.