The Iceman Cometh

This sad saga chronicles a group of drunks who meet up at a local saloon. They are full of big dreams for the future, but anyone who knows them knows that they are all talk and no action. Each man has glossed over the story of his life in his own mind, leaving out the bad bits and chalk any failures up to someone else’s fault or a tragedy that befell him.

The patrons look up to a salesman named Hickman ("Hickey") who stops in when he can. During the first half of the play everyone gathers at the saloon for a birthday party and just waits for Hickey to arrive. When he finally gets there something is different about him and immediately everyone is concerned. He has lost his happy-go-lucky attitude. Hickey forces each of the individuals show more to reevaluate their lives and ask themselves whether they are truly trying to improve it.

The owner of the saloon, Harry Hope, watches the drama unfolds in his establishment. He is concerned by the direction in which Hickey’s “ideas” are steering everyone. In this world people embrace only the possibility of a better life, they never intend to take the steps that would actually lead to one, but it's that hope that keeps them going.

It’s hard to explain why this was such a powerful story to me. I think part of it is the context in which it was written. It was published in 1940, and written during the Great Depression, a time of disillusionment in America. It captures that feeling of hopelessness in such a palpable way. I could see each of the characters thinking about their “one day” plans and truly believing that those dreams were attainable.

BOTTOM LINE: This play paints a beautiful picture of the crumbling American dream. It asks the question, do people really want to reach their goals or is the fact that they have those dreams enough for them? There’s something to be said for having a distant hope, especially for those living such desperate lives. show less

A nightmare of the wasted lives of alcoholics who fear life and love drink so much that they can't even leave their bar. Makes me glad I find the taste of alcohol unpleasant.

The format and the progression of this play is generally similar to Long Day's Journey Into Night, although with about three times as many characters. Most of the characters are introduced immediately at the beginning of act one: the bartender, about eight alcoholics--various types with various former careers--who are down on their luck, and the owner (who is also an alcoholic). Three or more of their alcoholic friends and one young stranger come in over time. Almost entirely through dialogue, the first half of the play explores their various miseries and lets them show more interact, displaying their camaraderie (which they always have when they're drinking freely or waiting to drink) and the tensions between them (which always occur the closer they come to trying to reclaim the lives they had before they hit the bottle or before the misfortune that drove them to drink). The third act introduces the only non-alcoholic character, an allegedly reformed alcoholic friend of the others who urges them to stop drinking and reclaim their lives. The rest of the play revolves around this character, and why he quit drinking, and how the other characters react to him. Act Four brings a climax shocking and revelatory, if not as sudden and explosive as that in Long Day's Journey Into Night.

The title refers to an joke the barflies heard from the central character long ago and mention to each other repeatedly. The central character used to tell the barflies a story about his wife cheating with the iceman (which, until the climax, is not taken seriously nor believed true). Its significance is this: the play's climax reveals that the central character's wife did indeed cheat (with an iceman, apparently), but the central character had provoked his wife to cheat by his incorrigibly sottish behavior; he blames himself entirely; so "the iceman" is the misfortune and misery the characters have brought on themselves in one way or another.

I initially preferred Long Day's Journey Into Night slightly, but that was probably a knee-jerk reaction to the last act of that play being more intense and startling. The Iceman Cometh is actually more interesting, just because there are more characters, more events happen and more secrets are revealed (and other secrets of the characters receive only subtle explanations that force the reader to study them more closely). show less

This is a hard play to recommend but it probably should be read by all for the depiction of an era and its exploration of difficult subject matter. I saw Eugene O'Neill's one act, two-man play, "Hughie," a couple of years ago and expected it to be bleak, which it was. But it was strangely riveting at the same time. That play like The Iceman explores delusions and, what O'Neill repeatedly calls pipe dreams. It also provides a picture of a time and place, which is the down and out side of early 20th century New York City. Reading a little bit about O'Neill was helpful to understand what drove him to write -- addiction, delusions and fear of facing life figure into so much of his work. In Iceman, the roles and lines of the characters are show more comical, pathetic and sympathetic all at once. It is a disturbing dose of reality that you can't put down. The characters have accents and say things like, "distoibed" and "soivice" and call each other louses and the like. While it's difficult to fully relate to the characters and take them seriously, you still hold out hope for them and want to see how it can possibly conclude.

Iceman is a long play but it is worth investing the time. Apparently, it is rarely performed as it runs 4.5 hours but it seems to read much faster than that. The Library of Congress listed it among its "Books That Shaped America." The play explores the international labor movement in the early 20th century, which is just one of the pipe dreams. The other delusions are the ones harbored by the individual characters who are living in the saloon -- afraid and now likely incapable of leaving it. The Iceman, a character named Hickey, is another of their delusions as they anxiously await his arrival, which usually brings with it a lot of laughs. This time it is different.

The saloon, called Harry Hope's, is based upon a real place called, "Jimmy-the-Priest's" that existed in the East Village and it figures in another O'Neill play. O'Neill really lived this life and so writes from experience. The portrayal seems over the top today but is likely not too far from cheap gin mill reality in 1912. In the end, I couldn't rate Iceman with five stars because I couldn't love it that much. But the blending of fantasy and reality and pathos in the bar have a way of staying with you and I'm still thinking about it. show less

Probably my favorite play of all time, this story draws you in despite yourself. It starts slowly, and you often don't know whether to pity or become angry with the characters, but it is a tragic and beautiful picture of a struggling group of men regardless. You have to take time reading it because of the number of characters, but you'll probably be glad you did if you can keep your patience in the beginning. It is laughable at times, and engaging and heartbreaking at once, but never sentimental.

The only criticism I have of this play is the author's constant and bizarre use of 'de' instead of 'the' and 'dat' instead of 'that' in his character dialogue. The setting is Greenwich Village, not Jamaica, Eugene O'Neill. I've read and heard plenty of NYC accents, and they never sounded like this. I challenge you to read the following passage while resiting the urge to give the characters Jamaican voices in your head:

--MARGIE: (coming to Rocky's defense—sneeringly) Don't notice dat broad, Rocky. Yuh heard her say "tomorrow," didn't yuh? It's de same old crap.

--CORA: (glares at her) Is dat so?

Otherwise, thought-provoking story and captivating read. Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs fans would like this. Very proto-beat.

I don't think I would have liked this play 20 years ago, but I really enjoyed it. The skill and ideas are amazing. I don't think the story was the greatest, but enough to keep me interested in what what going to happen. I can see why this work is so revered.

Re-read this recently, for probably the first time since the 80s. At first it's okay, set in a flophouse populated by the same types one encounters day-drinking at dive bars, though the slang is painfully of its time. Then the moralizing starts, and it gets to be real boring real quick. The twist ending is telegraphed far in advance, and doesn't really add anything to the story or the characters.

One of those plays that peaks at the title.