Play review – “The Iceman Cometh” by Eugene O'Neill

No one was better than Eugene O’Neill when it came to bums and low lives who hung around bars and this was one of his bums-in-bars masterpieces. It remains a powerful work, full of etched characters: the bar owner using his wife’s death as an excuse to hide from the world, the African-American former gambling hall owner, the former anarchist trying to deny his still-latent idealism, the young man who sold out his movement, the whores, the squabbling former soldiers. Hickey who arrives seems to be the hero, the man who is all smiles and smarts going to shake them out of their topor, chasing for pipe dreams – but we soon find out he’s not entirely innocent either. You can smell the bourbon and dirt and anarchism, even if it does go on a while. I think I’d prefer to read O’Neil than watch him.