Photo Credit: Richard Termine

The Iceman Cometh is one of those plays that many feel they have to see only once—and perhaps not even quite that many times. Edgar Allan Poe, a gifted literary critic as well as a powerful creative force, wrote that any work of literary art must observe the "limit of a single sitting.” I can say with some certainty that Eugene O'Neill was not concerned with that limit when he wrote Iceman, an endurance test of approximately five hours. As a matter of principle, any review of the play must come back to the facticity of its length; it is a difficult and taxing experience no matter the excellence of the acting, design, or directing—which, luckily, is all there in the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s recent staging of the 2012 Goodman Theatre production.

The year is 1912, and the setting is a grimly lit saloon and rooming house. The impoverished residents of said rooming house conduct their lives with the zombified air of those who have devoted the rest of their meager lives to drink. They spend their days waiting for a visit from the razzle-dazzle con man Theodore “Hickey” Hickman (Nathan Lane), who typically bestows upon them free drinks and lively stories. But that is not the way of it during Iceman. Hickey has suddenly given up alcohol and, with the cheerful fervor of a convert, unfolds a bizarre plan to divest the regulars of their “pipe dreams” of ever returning to a normal life outside the bar’s four walls.

There was rather a lot of breathless coverage at a funnyman playing the lead in one of the most hopeless plays of our modern age. But Iceman, for all its dreariness, is not without humor, and the ubiquity of the idea of the sad clown should demonstrate that our comedians appreciate a certain attraction to pathos. Mr. Lane in the role is marvelous, although it is simple to describe his performance: imagine you or I, when asked to do an impression of Nathan Lane, enacted about the broadest impression in our imagination. Lane’s mannerisms are themselves cultural icons, but they do serve the charming, manipulative Theodore Hickman perfectly. Indeed, it is hard to imagine the stoic, rough-hewn Brian Dennehy in the same role, which he played in a 1990 production. In this staging, he delivers his own heavily contemplative stillness as the erstwhile anarchist Larry Slade.

The play begins in near complete darkness, an oneiric beginning that perhaps was too on-the-nose: even in the haughty and well-heeled BAM, I observed many audience members nodding off in the first act. (The lighting director Natasha Katz has enacted her craft here with the artistry of a painting: the fact that I noticed it not once, but throughout, speaks to the intelligence of her design.)  This darkness partnered with the whispers of Mr. Dennehy and his shiftless counterparts create an atmosphere of somnolence that Mr. Lane boisterously breaks, somewhat of a relief to your humble correspondent and the audience in general, judging from the sudden straightened backs.

The acting cannot be faulted in this production: not only do Lane and Dennehy deserve accolades, but in some of the less showy roles, Steven Ouimette is devastating as proprietor Harry, and John Douglas Thompson as Joe Mott does more than can be expected with the ham-fisted race material he's given, lending gravity to a role that, although likely quite progressive when it was written in 1939, feels dated in the modern day. Patrick Andrews does teeter into stridency as the childish revolutionary Don Parritt, who comes out of Larry’s past to interrupt his apathetic, intoxicated fog with remembrances of Don’s free-spirited mother, Larry’s former lover, who seems to be modeled in part on the anarchist Emma Goldman.

Eugene O’Neill’s America is one of no dreams at all, and Iceman heads in equal part for the throat of anarchism (in Larry) and capitalism (in Hickey). Set against each other throughout the course of the play, the two come to resemble each other as much as anything else. This production is unusually deft at revealing the spiritual emptiness behind both of their dogmas, in a play in which little can be called subtle. (Actual dialogue: “For Death was the Iceman Hickey called to his home!” —in case you were curious as to what the Iceman symbolized.)

But Hickey himself comes in both the guise of Death and the Savior, a messianic comparison drawn particularly in the second act, with Ms. Katz’s glowing spotlight centered all-too-knowingly overhead on Hickey—who stands direct center of a long table, recalling The Last Supper. In the end, however, he is more Antichrist than Christ: his attempt to rouse the patrons of the bar is merely one last, great con from the master who can see through anyone. The third act is the crowning achievement of this theme, and of this production in general. The set design by Kevin Depinet is especially clever, a trompe l’oeil effect of the saloon’s main room that narrows the floorboards as they approach the requisite swinging double doors. The eye is drawn toward the exit, much like the eyes of the drunks themselves, who wake up from their respective fogs and drift out of the bar, some for the first time in years—however temporary their departures prove. Mr. Oumiette is heartbreaking as he attempts his usual liquid escape in the face of Hickey’s soapboxing, speaking the famous lines: “What did you do to this booze, Hickey? There’s no damned life in it.”

But here we come to the fourth and final act, in which the upholstered seats at BAM begin to divest themselves of their patrons, leaving a decimated bunch of survivors to muddle through the last act, which, frankly, is a mess. Not even Mr. Lane’s admirable scenery-chewing can save this last hour-and-change from its meandering and repetitive speeches. If O’Neill and director Robert Falls’s intention is to create the same weariness in the viewer as in the patrons of the bar, they have succeeded. Knowing why something is done, however, is not quite the same thing as appreciating it, and here the hours begin to make themselves known. But the ending, which faces the wildly noisy soullessness of the once-again oblivious barflies against Larry’s all-too-knowing silence, is a terrifying apotheosis of the themes of the play, restoring a unity to the proceedings that almost—almost—makes one forget the time.

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