Fort Greene

‘The Iceman Cometh’ to BAM

February 22, 2015 By Benjamin Preston Special to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle
“The Iceman Cometh,” starring Nathan Lane (center), is showing at BAM until March 15. Photo by Richard Termine, courtesy of BAM
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From the moment he burst on scene, throwing money into the air and laughing heartily, it was clear that Nathan Lane was going to give a memorable performance in “The Iceman Cometh.” And he delivered on his initial promise, bringing humanity, humor and audible volume to a character who spent most of the four-and-a-half-hour play exploring his own murky depths as he tried to pry a cadre of hopeless drunks from their hazy numbness.

This is the second time Chicago’s Goodman Theater Company has staged Eugene O’Neill’s classic play, which is showing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) until March 15. It’s also the second time Lane has played the role of Theodore “Hickey” Hickman — the traveling hardware salesman — and the second time Brian Dennehy has inhabited the skin of Larry Slade — the “Foolosopher” and disillusioned former Syndicalist-anarchist — at the direction of Robert Falls.

Many remember Dennehy as the cantankerous sheriff on the hunt for Rambo in “First Blood.” But he’s an old pro at O’Neill pieces, having performed in several of the playwright’s titles over the years, as well as having played Hickey himself in the early ’90s. But, from his “rawboned” Irish look to the bitter scowl he wore throughout the play’s entirety, it was clear that Dennehy was made to play Slade. He didn’t even seem to be acting and was a natural, cloudy foil for Lane’s energetic, almost sunny (if such a thing can be possible for so sad a character as Hickey) disposition.

Dennehy and Lane are supported by a talented crew of actors playing the motley crew of has-beens that occupy Harry Hope’s dead-end tavern. Kevin Depinet’s John Conklin-inspired set design brings just the right amount of flat dinginess to form a backdrop of hopelessness against which the ne’er-do-wells can exist.

Salvatore Inzerillo’s dutiful re-creation of the old Lower East Side Italian-American accent made his portrayal of an early 20th century bartender believable. He didn’t shy from his character’s one-moment-chummy, the-next-moment-brutal relationship with the two “tarts” working the street for him. This brought the audience face to face with a sort of male-on-female violence that is certainly not socially acceptable today, but still lurks below the surface of everyday life as a major problem.

But more on the accent. At a time when even the standard New York accent is fading away — the one where “coffee” sounds like “cwawfee” — the older, stronger accents, including the one where “work” comes out as “woik,” are rarer still. You may have an older relative who calls a pearl a poil, but aside from “Three Stooges” and “Bugs Bunny” reruns, a play like “Iceman” may be one of the few places that diction can be heard. But only if the actor does it right. So tanks fa dat good histaricle woik, Salvatore. 

John Douglas Thompson’s character, Joe Mott, an African-American who had once owned a gambling house, talked openly of race in terms that seemed to make the modern audience squirm — if only at first mention. The play was written in 1939 and takes place a little over a century ago, so some of the language was strong by today’s standards. But Mott’s tirades about how he’s treated as a black man in a world that favors whites strikes a chord amid racial tension that’s present even now. Thompson offered a powerful performance, bringing his character’s struggle to the surface in a story whose other characters were largely dismissive of his plight.

Don Parritt, the young, dapper Dan sent to pick at Slade as he wallows in his own bitter ambivalence, is an interesting character. To the uninitiated, he may seem irritating, even if he sort of parallels Hickey. It was Patrick Andrews’ second run as Parritt, and although his voice was soft and pleading at times, the majority of his lines were delivered in a pitch and volume that seemed like a pretty good imitation of Pete Campbell — the character from “Mad Men” — on a cocaine bender. It could have been an interpretation of how jarring and unwanted an aggressive, petulant outsider’s voice would sound to a group of semi-comatose drunks, so perhaps the audience was meant to feel that way, too.

It’s difficult to know what to walk away with when you’ve watched “The Iceman Cometh.” It’s a heart-rending story that takes its sweet time reaching denouement, but somehow, it seems to suggest that everything will be alright if you just keep doing what you’ve been doing while making at least some effort to minimize damage to those around you. Or that everyone’s sweet spot between pipe dreams and bitter reality is different, even if many of us tend toward delusion to keep ourselves going.

But trying to squeeze meaning out of a writer’s work is best left to English professors. The rest of us can appreciate good set design and thoughtful delivery. And maybe, just maybe, we can find a bit of those characters in all of us — the part that finds it’s best to eat, drink and be merry (but mostly drink), or tomorrow the iceman cometh.

Either way, if you think you can sit through nearly five hours of story, you might help yourself to a fresh look at today through yesterday’s lens.

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