The Iceman Cometh (review)

It was well worth venturing out on a wintry February evening for the Fells Point Corner Theatre production of The Iceman Cometh. This production was especially welcome thanks to the directorial vision of Lynda McClary, who helped realize the play's potential for intimacy in a small theater. The warmth of human contact, envisioned without pretension or apology, gave comfort in the midst of a play that has sometimes seemed harsh in its depiction of modern existence. O'Neill's classic play seemed to embrace the audience, who in turn embraced it as a refuge from the cruel streets, turning the experience into a comic-tragic immersion in a humanity equally lost and loving.

McClary's decision to cut the running time to three-and-a-half hours added intensity without sacrificing too much of O'Neill's method of accretion. This meant eliminating many variants of Larry's Slade's celebrated line, "The lie of the pipedream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten, mad lot of us, drunk or sober." As a result, he seemed here less a dark wisdom-figure than a frightened, ordinary man, especially when, as played by Mark Scharf, he finds himself on the defensive against Don Parritt. Scharf 's tightly held-in presence created a territory difficult for other characters to penetrate. Meanwhile, David Shoemaker played Parritt as a gawky, gangly naïf who, after turning in his mother to the police in a fit of spite, finds himself terrifyingly alone. The dynamic between Larry and Parritt was father/son as much as protagonist/ antagonist, defined by the pathos of people too frightened to be able to help each other, even if each saw something of the other's truth.

McClary kept the play lively by having characters occasionally speak over one another. Much of the small talk was orchestrated as background to longer speeches so that a chorus of chatter complemented or competed with the principal speakers. Although the audience could hear what was said, we were forced to divide our attention between this chattering chorus and more focal monologues, such as when Harry remembers his Bessie or Larry despairs over human nature. This choral technique was effective because it suggested that speaking is what human beings do—what we need to do— to define ourselves, though I would not relish a whole evening of such a continuous bombardment of words.

Fig. 1.

(Front row) Tony Colavito, Rodney Bonds, Mark Scharf, Michael Robinson. (Back row) William Walker, Ian Bonds, Mike Papa, David Morey, John Hurley, Rick Stover, Tim Evans. Photo by Ken Stanek.

Stressing the need for communication revealed much about The Iceman Cometh, which is, after all, full of meetings, greetings, and storytelling. At the same time, this quasi-musical counterpoint of monologues, dialogues, and choral backgrounds suggested that sometimes speech serves purposes other than communication, like masking the suffering of others, hiding oneself in a blizzard of words, and stirring up chaos. Cacophonous moments during the play built toward the conclusion, when Babel erupted for an extended amount of time. Silences, on the other hand, tended to take on a sinister tone, especially in the third act, as they suggested isolation or fear, as in Larry's preoccupation with what he was unable to say to Parritt; Parritt's stuttering hesitations; and Hickey's increasingly frantic, wordless gestures, which pointed toward the impotence of language to save those who need saving.

Many of the performances were noteworthy, including William Walker's Joe Mott, who was full of barely contained rage as well as bitter defeat; Dan Collins's "Jimmy Tomorrow," Frank Vince's Rocky, and Mike Papa's Hugo, all of whom housed palpable inner demons; and the female characters played with happy carnality by Anne Shoemaker, Deirdre McAllister, and Whitney St. Ours. Tony Colavito was a masterful Hickey. His manic gesticulations, such as when he lifted his arms as though expecting manna from heaven, punctuated long speeches that sounded...