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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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TT: Not a hope in hell

May 4, 2012 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column, filed from Chicago, I review the Goodman Theatre’s revival of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, directed by Robert Falls and starring Nathan Lane and Brian Dennehy. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
No matter how far you have to go to get there, the place to be right now is Chicago, where Nathan Lane and Brian Dennehy are starring in Robert Falls’ Goodman Theatre revival of “The Iceman Cometh.”
tn-500_screenshot2012-05-01at6.05.09pm.jpgProductions of Eugene O’Neill’s longest, most ambitious play are as scarce as $100,000 bills, not because anyone doubts the importance of “The Iceman Cometh” but because it is nearly five hours long and calls for a large cast led by a tireless actor who oozes charisma from every pore. That’s why “Iceman” has been mounted only four times on Broadway, most recently in 1999, and never for more than a few weeks at a time. Regional revivals are no less rare–this is the first one of any consequence to be mounted in recent memory–and so Mr. Falls’ “Iceman” would be worth seeing even if it were merely adequate. It is, in fact, extraordinary, a totally successful staging of a formidably difficult play in which Mr. Lane gives a performance that will stay with you for as long as you live….
Briskly paced and staged with proper attention to the humor without which the play can grind to a painful halt, this “Iceman” puts the author, not the director, in the spotlight. No overweeningly high concept has been imposed on the script. Instead we see it plain, enacted as a series of unostentatious tableaux that Natasha Katz has lit with a Rembrandt-like feel for chiaroscuro.
Mr. Lane, a first-rate actor who is usually content to appear in second-rate shows, rises to the occasion as effortlessly as he did in the 2009 Broadway revival of “Waiting for Godot.” His Hickey is a cracked Babbitt who wears his straw hat at the jauntiest of angles, looking for all the world as though he were ready to break into the old soft-shoe. To see him disintegrate before your eyes in the last act is to gaze into the abyss…
* * *
Read the whole thing here.
An excerpt from Sidney Lumet’s TV version of The Iceman Cometh, originally telecast on Play of the Week in 1960, starring Jason Robards, Jr., as Hickey:

A brief clip from the 1999 Broadway revival of The Iceman Cometh, starring Kevin Spacey as Hickey:

John Frankenheimer’s 1973 American Film Theatre adaptation of The Iceman Cometh, starring Lee Marvin as Hickey and Robert Ryan as Larry:

TT: Footnote to a triumph

May 4, 2012 by Terry Teachout

John Douglas Thompson is appearing alongside Nathan Lane and Brian Dennehy in the Goodman Theatre’s revival of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh. Needless to say, I couldn’t mention his performance in my Wall Street Journal review of the show because he will also be starring in Shakespeare & Company’s production of Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, later this summer.
1112IcemanPP_600x360_12.jpgFor this reason, I thought I’d let you know what Charles Isherwood had to say about John in today’s New York Times:
“The great actor John Douglas Thompson, known in New York for his Othello and Macbeth as well as his stunning performance in O’Neill’s ‘Emperor Jones,’ creates yet another indelible portrait in Joe Mott, the former owner of a gambling house whose gentle good humor masks a volcanic rage at a life warped by racism. Pacing like a caged animal in response to Hickey’s needling presence, Joe erupts into near violence with a force that scalds….”

TT: Almanac

May 4, 2012 by Terry Teachout

“All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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