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  1. Photograph: Liz Lauren
    Photograph: Liz Lauren

    The Iceman Cometh at Goodman Theatre

  2. Photograph: Liz Lauren
    Photograph: Liz Lauren

    Nathan Lane in The Iceman Cometh at Goodman Theatre

  3. Photograph: Liz Lauren
    Photograph: Liz Lauren

    Brian Dennehy and Nathan Lane in The Iceman Cometh at Goodman Theatre

  4. Photograph: Liz Lauren
    Photograph: Liz Lauren

    Brian Dennehy in The Iceman Cometh at Goodman Theatre

  5. Photograph: Liz Lauren
    Photograph: Liz Lauren

    Patrick Andrews and Brian Dennehy in The Iceman Cometh at Goodman Theatre

  6. Photograph: Liz Lauren
    Photograph: Liz Lauren

    The Iceman Cometh at Goodman Theatre

  7. Photograph: Liz Lauren
    Photograph: Liz Lauren

    Marc Grapey, Kate Arrington, John Douglas Thompson, Salvatore Inzerillo, Tara Sissom and Lee Stark in The Iceman Cometh at Goodman Theatre

  8. Photograph: Liz Lauren
    Photograph: Liz Lauren

    Lee Stark, Salvatore Inzerillo and Tara Sissom in The Iceman Cometh at Goodman Theatre

  9. Photograph: Liz Lauren
    Photograph: Liz Lauren

    Stephen Ouimette in The Iceman Cometh at Goodman Theatre

  10. Photograph: Liz Lauren
    Photograph: Liz Lauren

    Brian Dennehy and Lee Wilkof in The Iceman Cometh at Goodman Theatre

  11. Photograph: Liz Lauren
    Photograph: Liz Lauren

    James Harms in The Iceman Cometh at Goodman Theatre

  12. Photograph: Liz Lauren
    Photograph: Liz Lauren

    John Judd, Larry Neumann Jr., John Douglas Thompson and John Reeger in The Iceman Cometh at Goodman Theatre

  13. Photograph: Liz Lauren
    Photograph: Liz Lauren

    John Hoogenakker in The Iceman Cometh at Goodman Theatre

  14. Photograph: Liz Lauren
    Photograph: Liz Lauren

    Stephen Ouimette and Nathan Lane in The Iceman Cometh at Goodman Theatre

  15. Photograph: Liz Lauren
    Photograph: Liz Lauren

    Kate Arrington, Tara Sissom, Nathan Lane and Lee Stark in The Iceman Cometh at Goodman Theatre

The Iceman Cometh at Goodman Theatre | Theater review

Nathan Lane and Brian Dennehy tackle Eugene O’Neill’s chilly portrait of profligates and pipe dreams.

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On the face of it, casting Nathan Lane in a Eugene O’Neill play seems about as good an idea as casting Ethel Merman as Medea. Lane is a born musical-comedy clown in the shamelessly hammy vaudeville tradition, while O’Neill is far and away the gloomiest of the great dramatists. His work is the last place you should go looking for yuks, excepting of course a funeral and The Big Bang Theory

So, all right, Lane and O’Neill are strange bedfellows. But as it turns out, Lane’s performance in The Iceman Cometh is by no means a disaster. It’s not entirely a triumph, either, but he doesn’t embarrass himself, and now and then comes close to evoking the mix of horror and pity O’Neill was aiming for.

The play’s four acts take place at Harry Hope’s beyond-seedy saloon and rooming house, which is inhabited by a bunch of booze-soaked bums, each of whom harbors his own pathetic pipe dream. Among the 18 characters (portrayed in the Goodman’s production by a uniformly excellent ensemble cast), there’s a pair of disgraced soldiers parading around like war heroes, a washed-up journalist forever planning his return to the workforce, a black entrepreneur who wants to be white, whores who insist they’re merely “tarts,” a socialist prophesying revolution, and old-timer Larry, who pretends not to care about anything.

Lane plays Hickey, a traveling salesman beloved by the tenants because whenever he passes through on one of his periodic benders he always brings good times and a wad of cash to pay for drinks. Only this time he’s different. He’s still as jovial as ever—but sober, and eerily intent on disabusing the barflies of their illusions. He wants to clear away the fog of yesterdays and tomorrows so his friends can finally face who they really are.

As with all great works of art, O’Neill’s grandly messy play resists easy interpretation. No sooner have we recoiled from the characters’ satisfaction with lying to themselves than we start to feel sorry for them as Hickey mercilessly—but with a smile, mind you—demolishes every last one of their futile hopes. 

With his charisma and sense of humor, Lane is good at conveying Hickey’s life-of-the-party bonhomie and does a creditable impression of a road-to-Damascus convert. His largely external performance, however, leaves less room for the man’s shrewdness and darker depths (and his barking line readings occasionally slide toward the Regis Philbin–esque).

Robert Falls, who first directed the play in 1990, supplies an austere staging in fruitful contrast to the overflowing verbal abundance of the script. Displaying a painterly sense of composition, Falls uses Natasha Katz’s sculptural lighting design and Kevin Depinet’s monumental, mud-colored sets to subtly reference everything from Caravaggio’s half-lit religious canvases to Edward Hopper’s melancholy loners.

That 1990 production became the first of many O’Neill collaborations between Falls and actor Brian Dennehy, who played Hickey. Twenty-two years later, he’s transitioned to the role of Larry, the barstool nihilist cursed with a sense of decency and a will to live in spite of what he professes. By turns sardonic, mournful and filled with a terrifying rage, Dennehy undertakes an evening-long struggle with himself that’s riveting to watch.

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