Bejees!

The Iceman Cometh
by Eugene O'Neill


Next on the list of plays I've never read but should is The Iceman Cometh.  I've owned this copy of the play for years and honestly believe I bought it because it has Kevin Spacey on the cover.  I am a fan.  I've even tried to read the play before; a few times.  However, I could never get past the four pages of stage directions and descriptions that open the play.  Forcing myself to get through the play this time, these stage directions are still my biggest criticism of the piece.

It amazes me when I read a classic piece of drama, or even a new piece that's winning all kinds of awards and acclaim, and they just suck.  The stories aren't necessarily bad, but there are so many flaws in the dramaturgy that I can't imagine it ever even being read by anyone important.  That's how I feel about Iceman Cometh.  Like I said, the huge flaw is the sheer volume of stage directions here.  Each act begins with a length description of the set, which is bad enough, but then littered throughout every scene is tons and tons of little stage directions prescriptively outlining every movement the actors make.  There are also several stage directions instructing the actors how to read given lines.  This drives me crazy.  You can't be a control freak and a playwright.  It's possibly the most collaborative art form out there, and you have to be okay with your script being interpreted by a large group of directors and actors.  If you can't handle that, then don't be a playwright because I guarantee that whenever a director or actor picks up Iceman Cometh for a production, they immediately ignore all the stage directions.

Second, there are too many characters here.  There are maybe 3 characters in the play that I'm at all interested in, and the rest feel mostly like filler.  Hickey is great.  He's very well-written, and has his shit together, and I found myself just trying to get through the rest of the play to get to the next Hickey scene.  His story line is compelling, and I like the bartender character a lot, but the rest of these people are worthless.

There are other little things about the play that annoy me as well, like O'Neill's tendency to write in really thick dialects.  Bejees it's irritating.  Overall, I just think it's a poorly constructed play, and that detracts from what I think is a pretty good story.  I'd definitely be interested in seeing the piece performed one day, but I'll never attempt to read it again.