4/5 A Good Production of a Great Play
  by Michael B. Druxman (Austin, TX)
Eugene O'Neill's classic play, THE ICEMAN COMETH, was released in 1973 as the opening production of THE AMERICAN FILM THEATRE. It was directed by John Frankenheimer.

The stellar cast included Fredric March, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, Jeff Bridges, Moses Gunn and Bradford Dillman.

Set in 1913, the four-hour play centers around the down-and-out men and women who populate the New York skid row bar, owned by Harry Hope (March, in his final film role). They are awaiting the annual arrival of Hickey (Marvin), a salesman who jokes about his "cheating" wife, buys everybody drinks and perpetuates their false hopes and dreams.

This year, something is different. Hickey is not only "on the wagon," but he's going to put each and every one of the barflies' dreams under a microscope and smash them.

Robert Ryan, playing the philosophical Larry, steals the acting honors in this fine production, with March taking a close second as the saloon keeper who has not stepped outside the establishment for twenty years.

Marvin makes an okay Hickey, but we'd much rather have seen Jason Robards repeat his legendary performance that he did both off-Broadway and on television's "Play of the Week".

Nevertheless, this is a fine production that will be enjoyed by everyone who loves great theatre.

© Michael B. Druxman

5/5 Magnificent Darkness
  by Robert N. Britcher
I only recently saw the play on video, both the Jason Robards version and this one with Lee Marvin as Hickey. If one wishes to see Eugene O'Neill at his best, this is the play. (I also recommend "Long Day's Journey into Night." But I recommend the screen version, even over a live performance - as it requires towering performances for the play to get to you. I saw a version of it at Arena Stage in DC a few years back and it left me cold. However, the screen version with Ralph Richardson and Kathryn Hepburn is shattering.)

The Iceman Cometh is a staggering work of imagination. Although O'Neill was quite familiar with the American bar scene and its hard edges, this play is no mere experiential portrait of men and women down on the booze. Along with Wilder's Our Town, it is one of the most metaphysical plays ever written by an American.

The dialogue is brilliant, almost Shakespearean. It bleeds. Despite the play's length, there are no wasted words, no wasted motion.

Like Hamlet, this is a play in which men cannot make up their minds. They are unable to get on with life, each in various ways. The booze and the company keep them moored to their illusions -- that, someday, they will achieve their pipedeams.

Into this milieu steps Hickey, their favorite merry-maker, boozer, and story teller. But Hickey is no longer that man. He has come back to celebrate with them, in a sense, from a distance. His more pressing objective however (and the core of the play) is to share with them the peace of mind he has just found, without all the booze and lies and stories. He urges them to change and they come to detest him, even as they slowly learn what it was that changed him. In this, the play is quintessentially Freudian. Our resistance to change is so profound, that we would rather suffer and remain in-place, rather than risk something we fear that might actually be good for us.

I agree with the theater critic Stanley Kaufman: Lee Marvin is great as Hickey. (The entire cast of this version also features some of the greatest performances of some our greatest actors in - one could hardly say - the supporting roles.) Marvin's Hickey is no caricature, as I found Robards' portayal to be. There is a smarminess about Robards' performances (in this and in other plays and films) that I find
offputting. Marvin is authentic. In a sense, Marvin is Hickey.

3/5 A Classic If You Like Pub Drinkers
  by Betty Burks (Knoxville, TN)
Written by Eugene O'Neill, winner of the Nobel prize for Literature, this movie is based on radicals in Greenwich Village where he lived for a time. In 1911, he lived on the waterfront of Manhattan's skid row on Fulton Street, and used some of the residents as the characters in this play. By 1920, he was a published author along the lines of Tennessee Williams and James Agee and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for 'Beyond the Horizon.'

This movie lacks action per se but has plenty of character study; in this one, Mark liked Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, my favorite poet ("and the hight shall be filled with music"). In the rogue's gallery, he even sang a song about Jack, an Irish tome. It may be quiet and simple, but it is far from perfect: all about alcoholics (not my favorite subject). Three doxies in the bar welcome Hickey back to find a 'music man' talker who won't drink booze any more.

It is like a filmed play, no action outside the pub. One black man in the group smashed his glass and had a chip on his shoulder. The Britisher leaves in a huff as they are showing him no respect for a high education. Hickey's return has upset the status quo as the drinkers resent his saintemonious better-than-thou actions. The Irishman resented his "airs." and even the has-been lawyer defends his pipe dreams. Each has his own foibles and fears.

The Ice man is death and no one welcomes death with open arms. Death is to be dreaded and avoided by all means. Death is final and can't be regretted. Death is forever for sinners like these. Lee Marvin won an Emmy for the main character, who was a lot like the one he played in the Clint Eastwood film, Play Misty for Me.

5/5 Classic Performance
  by Delta88 (San Diego)
This is a classic play by Eugene O'Neil with an extrodinary cast led by Lee Marvin. As with all of O'Neil's plays they are long and draw out which can cause some attention span problems but the performances by the actors which includes a young Jeff Bridges who gives an outstanding performance coupled and the veteran actor, Robert Ryan who Bridges is trying to create a father/son relationship with. The dynamic and interplay between these two is a case study in psychology as is the entire play. This is a Three Act Play with the final act, i.e., disc three probably the most powerful as Lee Marvins' character, Hickey exposes his true self and his true life. It is astonishing how good Marvin is and the length of the dialogue he has to present. O'Neil must have been a really tortured soul as this play and others like Long Days Journey into Night demonstrates the pain that he went though during his life. You will find no better performances to reflect O'Neil's talent than this DVD.

5/5 The Iceman Cometh
  by John Farr
Star Lee Marvin delivers the goods in the demanding central role of Hickey, the loutish sermonizer who attempts to convince his fellow losers that admitting to being a failure is the only possible redemption. In the last role of a long and distinguished screen career, March also shines as the aptly named Harry Hope, a widower who numbs his grief with work. Still it's tough guy Ryan who gives the film's most towering performance as the dying, laconic intellectual Slade (Ryan was also terminally ill when the film was shot). Frankenheimer, normally a director of high-wire political thrillers, directs Eugene O'Neill's raw, devastating play with confidence and sympathy for the plight of his characters. Look for a very young Jeff Bridges as Parritt, Slade's tragic young friend.