Tag Archives: John Douglas Thompson

FREE SHAKESPEARE ON THE RADIO: RICHARD II

richard ii radio

Who: Barzin Akhavan, Sean Carvajal, Michael Bradley Cohen, Sanjit De Silva, Biko Eisen-Martin, Michael Gaston, Stephen McKinley Henderson, André Holland, Miriam A. Hyman, Merritt Janson, Elijah Jones, Dakin Matthews, Jacob Ming-Trent, Maria Mukuka, Lupita Nyong’o, Okwui Okpokwasili, Estelle Parsons, Tom Pecinka, Phylicia Rashad, Reza Salazar, Thom Sesma, Sathya Sridharan, John Douglas Thompson, Claire van der Boom, Natalie Woolams-Torres, Ja’Siah Young
What: Audio broadcast of Richard II over four consecutive nights
Where: WNYC 93.9 FM and AM 820
When: July 13-16, free (donations accepted), 8:00
Why: The Public Theater was originally set to present a rare production of Richard II from May 19 to June 21 at the Delacorte this season; the only other times Shakespeare in the Park tackled the first play in the Henriad were in 1961 with Gladys Vaughan, J. D. Cannon, and James Earl Jones and again in 1987 with Marian Seldes, Rocky Carroll, Tony Shalhoub, and Peter MacNicol in the title role. The pandemic lockdown changed those plans, so instead, the late-sixteenth-century play, known in full as The Life and Death of King Richard the Second, will be performed on the radio by an all-star cast, specifically adapted for this time of coronavirus and BLM protests against police brutality. “A fractured society. A man wrongfully murdered. The palpable threat of violence and revenge against a broken system. Revolution and regime change. This was Shakespeare’s backdrop for Richard II,” director Saheem Ali said in a statement. “I’m exceptionally proud of this production, recorded for public radio with a predominantly BIPOC ensemble. It’s my hope that listening to Shakespeare’s words, broadcast in the midst of a pandemic and an uprising, will have powerful resonance in our world.” The stellar cast includes André Holland as the king, Elijah Jones as Hotspur, Sean Carvajal as Gardner’s Man and Surrey, Michael Gaston as Northumberland, Stephen McKinley Henderson as Gardener, Miriam A. Hyman as Bollingbroke, Dakin Matthews as Gaunt, Okwui Okpokwasili as Willoughby and Abbot, Estelle Parsons as the Duchess of York, Phylicia Rashad as the Duchess of Gloucester, John Douglas Thompson as York, and Lupita Nyong’o as the narrator. For the production, the Public has teamed up with WNYC, which will stream the audio online and on the radio (93.9 FM and AM 820) in four hourlong parts, July 13-16 at 8:00.

The adapted script is available here, and you can follow Ambereen Dadabhoy’s nightly synopsis here. “What must the King do now? Must he submit? / The King shall do it. Must he be deposed? / The King shall be contented. Must he lose / The name of King? I’ God’s name, let it go,” the king says, in words that still sting today. “My gorgeous palace for a hermitage, / My gay apparel for an almsman’s gown, / My figured goblets for a dish of wood, / My scepter for a palmer’s walking staff, / My subjects for a pair of carved saints / And my large kingdom for a little grave, / A little, little grave, an obscure grave; / Aumerle, thou weep’st, my tender-hearted cousin! / We’ll make foul weather with despised tears; / Our sighs and they shall lodge the summer corn / And make a dearth in this revolting land.”

IN THE DIRECTOR’S CHAIR WITH RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON

in the directors chair

Who: Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Stephen M. Kaus
What: Livestream discussion with exclusive footage
Where: Manhattan Theatre Club Facebook Live
When: Thursday, May 21, free, 5:00
Why: In 2017, Manhattan Theatre Club presented the August Wilson’s Jitney at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, the first American Century Cycle play Wilson wrote but the last to reach Broadway. The production, which earned the Tony for Best Revival of a Play and featured John Douglas Thompson, André Holland, Ray Anthony Thomas, Brandon J. Dirden, Carra Patterson, Michael Potts, Harvy Blanks, Anthony Chisholm, and Keith Randolph Smith, was directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who has acted in, directed, and/or recorded the complete ten-play cycle and was friends with the playwright; he was Wilson’s personal choice to portray him in the autobiographical one-man show How I Learned What I Learned once Wilson got ill and then passed away, in 2005 at the age of sixty. On May 21 at 5:00 on MTC’s Facebook page, Santiago-Hudson will discuss his directorial choices, accompanied by clips from the Broadway run that he will review in depth; he will be joined by MTC director of artistic producing Stephen M. Kaus. Santiago-Hudson won a Tony for his performance in Wilson’s Seven Guitars, has written Lackawanna Blues and Your Blues Ain’t Sweet Like Mine, and has directed such other plays as Paradise Blue and Wilson’s The Piano Lesson.

KING LEAR ON BROADWAY

Glenda Jackson wonders where it all went wrong in King Lear revival on Broadway (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

Cort Theatre
138 West 48th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 9, $35-$129
www.kinglearonbroadway.com

Theater aficionados would likely pay good money to watch the inimitable Glenda Jackson read the phone book, as the proverbial platitude goes. But director Sam Gold challenges that now-outdated cliché with his misguided production of King Lear, which boasts the remarkable actress and former longtime British MP as Shakespeare’s declining ruler. On the night I attended, early in the show a valet bringing Lear the crown stumbled and dropped the prop. Jackson let out an angry howl that echoed throughout the Cort Theatre in what looked to be an ad-lib, but it summed up everyone’s frustration with Gold’s handling of the tragedy. The usually dependable and insightful Tony and Obie winner (Fun Home, Circle Mirror Transformation) seems to be going out of his way to unnecessarily complicate virtually every aspect of this consistently awkward staging.

King Lear (Glenda Jackson) has something to say to his youngest daughter, Cordelia (Ruth Wilson) (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

The story takes place in a gold-plated rectangular, horizontal space, with characters in relatively modern dress. (The set is by Miriam Buether, with costumes by Ann Roth.) Ruth Wilson is excellent as both Cordelia and the Fool, although it is sometimes hard to tell when she is one or the other. John Douglas Thompson is stalwart as Kent, his authoritative voice booming, but the rest of the cast seems lost, seeking Gold to guide them not unlike poor Tom (Sean Carvajal) leading his blinded father, Gloucester (Jayne Houdyshell), to the edge of a precipice. The Duke of Cornwall is portrayed by Russell Harvard, a deaf actor who is followed around by Michael Arden, who translates for him in American Sign Language. Philip Glass has composed a lovely score, performed by violinists Cenovia Cummins and Martin Agee, violist Chris Cardona, and cellist Stephanie Cummins; when they unobtrusively play in the far back corner, all is well, but later they come to the front and mingle with the actors, which is unnerving and off-putting. Goneril (Elizabeth Marvel) at first shows empathy for Cordelia, but that changes fast, leading to a sexual expression that made the audience gasp in horror. Pedro Pascal is ineffective as the devious Edmund, while Carvajal is too plain as his too-trusting half-brother, Edgar. The cast also includes Dion Johnstone as the Duke of Albany, Aisling O’Sullivan as a vicious Regan, Ian Lassiter as the King of France, and Matthew Maher as a creepy Oswald. Oh, and there are gunshots.

Ruth Wilson, Glenda Jackson, and John Douglas Thompson are the bright spots in Sam Gold’s revival of King Lear (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

Fortunately, watching Jackson for nearly three and a half hours — she does take that long break at the beginning of the second act, and the play suffers even further in her absence — makes this Lear worth it; Jackson, now eighty-two, might be a wisp of a thing, but she radiates intense strength and greatness every step of the way. But be advised that this is not Deborah Warner’s 2016-17 version that took London by storm. I am no traditionalist by any means — for example, I adore what Daniel Fish has done with Oklahoma! — but Gold has deconstructed the play only to reconstruct it with, dare I say, a Lear-like madness that just too often is baffling if not downright annoying. New York has seen many a Lear over the last dozen years — Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Derek Jacobi, John Lithgow, Frank Langella, Sir Antony Sher, Michael Pennington, and Sam Waterston — and Jackson is a worthy addition to that list, but it is telling that she received neither a Tony nor a Drama Desk nomination for her performance, and the production also did not get nods for Best Revival. It’s like an imperfect storm, with Jackson at the center, trying to survive the downpour, along with the rest of us.

CAROUSEL ON BROADWAY

Julie Jordan (Jessie Mueller) and Billy Bigelow (Joshua Henry) fall in love in Carousel revival at the Imperial (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Imperial Theatre
249 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 6, $59-$169
carouselbroadw ay.com

Pardon the pun, but the matinee I saw of the Broadway revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s beloved Carousel at the Imperial Theatre had more than its share of ups and downs, including something I had never before experienced in a theater. About ten minutes into the first act, which begins with a beautiful dialogue-free ballet with gorgeous new choreography by New York City Ballet soloist and resident choreographer Justin Peck, a loudspeaker announcement asked the actors to leave the stage due to a medical emergency in the audience. Theater personnel and doctors tended to an ill man at the far right side of the orchestra for about fifteen minutes before the show resumed, restarting shortly before the place where it had been stopped. Later, about ten minutes into the second act, during what is the emotional high point of the narrative, cries of help could be heard from a few rows behind where I was sitting. Again, the voice came over the loudspeakers, asking the cast to leave the stage because of another medical emergency. This time it appeared to be a small child choking; it took another ten minutes or so for things to calm down as the boy, who seemed to be okay, and his family were escorted into the lobby. Again, the show then restarted a moment before it had been stopped. It is a tribute to the cast and crew that both situations were handled gracefully and professionally, but it’s still an unusual occurrence that left an uncomfortable aura in the air — much as the plot of Carousel does, especially today.

Julie Jordan (Jessie Mueller) delights in hearing about best friend Carrie Pipperidge’s (Lindsay Mendez) trip to New York City in Carousel (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

The production itself, directed by three-time Tony winner Jack O’Brien (The Coast of Utopia, Hairspray), with splendid costumes by Oscar and Tony winner Ann Roth (The English Patient, The Nance), lovely sets (the carousel itself earns deserved applause) by four-time Tony winner Santo Loquasto (Café Crown, Hello, Dolly!), and wonderful orchestrations by EGOT winner Jonathan Tunick (Titanic, A Little Night Music), is first-rate all the way, even with some critical miscasting and the always problematic second act. The plot, adapted from the 1909 Hungarian play Liliom by Ferenc Molnár, is the classic tale of a good girl falling for a bad boy and trouble ensuing. Local mill worker Julie Jordan (Jessie Mueller) is attracted to carousel operator Billy Bigelow (Joshua Henry), agreeing to meet him one night in a park. She brings along her best friend and coworker, Carrie Pipperidge (Lindsay Mendez), who is not sure this is the best idea. Billy arrives, proving to be a bit of a cad, but even when a policeman (Antoine L. Smith) advises Julie of Billy’s questionable dealings with other women, she can’t stop herself, risking her job and more to be with him. Meanwhile, Carrie is in love with the much less dangerous wannabe herring king, Enoch Snow (Alexander Gemignani). Billy and Julie marry and have a child, but money is scarce, so when Jigger Craigin (NYCB principal dancer Amar Ramasar) approaches Billy with a plan to make a quick buck, Billy takes the chance, and tragedy follows.

Opera superstar Renée Fleming makes a point as Nettie Fowler in Broadway revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein classic (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

The immensely talented Mendez (Significant Other, Dogfight) is charming as the dependable Carrie; Gemignani (Les Misérables, Sweeney Todd) is terrific as her beau, forward-thinking in business and woefully conservative otherwise; Tony winner Mueller (Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Waitress), who played Carrie to Kelli O’Hara’s Julie in a 2013 Live from Lincoln Center concert version with the New York Philharmonic, again shows off her marvelous voice and wide-eyed innocence; retired opera star Renée Fleming excels as seaside spa owner Nettie Fowler; Margaret Colin (Defiance, The Columnist) is effective as carousel owner Mrs. Mullin; and Tony nominee John Douglas Thompson (Jitney, The Emperor Jones) is stoic as the mysterious Starkeeper, who keeps watch over all the goings-on until getting more involved in the fantastical second act. But two-time Tony nominee Henry (The Scottsboro Boys, Violet) is out of place, like he’s in a different show, his anger and rage so overwhelming that it becomes hard to imagine why Jessie first falls for him, then stays with him. O’Brien doesn’t shy away from the domestic abuse subplot, although it is difficult to watch in the #MeToo generation. “I knew why you hit me. You were quick-tempered and unhappy. That don’t excuse it. But I guess I always knew everything you were thinking,” Julie says, while Nettie sings, “What’s the use of wond’rin’ if he’s good or if he’s bad. He’s your feller, and you love him — that’s all there is to that.” The show debuted on Broadway in 1945 and has been revived in 1957 and 1994, in addition to being made into a film in 1956; it features such timeless songs as “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone” as well as an emotional ballet in the second act that begins as a solo, performed here by NYCB principal dancer Brittany Pollack. But the scenes involving heaven feel dry and stale, detracting from the otherwise powerful, earthy story. This Carousel reaches for the brass ring but comes up too short.

SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK: JULIUS CAESAR

Marc Antony (Elizabeth Marvel) bows down to Julius Caesar (Gregg Henry) in controversial Shakespeare in the Park staging (photo by Joan Marcus)

Central Park
Delacorte Theater
Through June 18, free, 8:00
shakespeareinthepark.org

In his October 14, 2016, opinion piece “Donald Trump is America’s Julius Caesar” for the Daily Caller, Moses Apostaticus wrote, “Every so often in history a man comes along who overthrows a corrupt elite and resets the political establishment. We live in such a time. In our time that man is Donald Trump.” Freelance writer Apostaticus came to praise Trump, not to bury him, explaining, “Trump’s similarities to Caesar are striking. . . . Like Caesar, Trump has become a lightning rod for the growing discontent of the American people.” In 1864, in a one-time-only benefit to raise funds for a statue of William Shakespeare to be placed in Central Park, the three Booth brothers staged the Bard’s 1599 tragedy, Julius Caesar. John Wilkes Booth wanted to play Brutus, but the meaty part went to Edwin; John played Marc Antony, while Junius portrayed Caius Cassius. John Wilkes Booth might not have gotten to stab the Roman leader onstage, but the following year he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre. Which brings us to Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis’s controversial Shakespeare in the Park version of Julius Caesar, which opened tonight at the Delacorte a day after Delta Airlines and Bank of America pulled their sponsorship of the beloved Public Theater summer series. Eustis has transformed Caesar into Trump: Gregg Henry, who portrayed Trump-like presidential contender Hollis Doyle on Scandal, wears a blue suit with an overlong red tie and is accompanied by his wife, Calpurnia (Tina Benko), who swats his hand away when he tries to hold it. Calpurnia looks and speaks like Melania but has Ivanka’s blond hair, while tribune Marullus (Natalie Woolams-Torres) resembles Trump aide Omarosa Manigault. This Caesar tweets from the bathtub, but his smart, strong right-hand woman, Marc Antony (Elizabeth Marvel), is no mere Kellyanne Conway in a track suit.

Brutus (Corey Stoll) and Cassius (John Douglas Thompson) conspire in Julius Caesar at the Delacorte (photo by Joan Marcus)

In some ways, the play recalls Orson Welles’s 1937 Mercury Theatre production, in which Caesar was based on Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini ruling in modern-day Rome. Eustis sets his story in the Occupy world; before the show starts, the audience is invited up to the stage to add their views on the state of the country on a post-it and stick it onto a kind of anarchist wall. In the back of David Rockwell’s stage are three large depictions of the U.S. Capitol, a piece of the Constitution, and George Washington, along with two broken, movable sections of what could be a large crown or ancient architectural structure. The cast is dressed in contemporary clothing designed by Paul Tazewell. Caesar has just taunted the Roman rabble with the possibility he may accept their adulation and become emperor of Rome, leading a group of powerful senators — Marcus Brutus (Corey Stoll), Caius Cassius (John Douglas Thompson), Casca (Teagle F. Bougere), Decius Brutus (Eisa Davis), Cinna (Christopher Livingston), Metullus Cimber (Marjan Neshat), Trebonius (Motell Foster), and Ligarius (Chris Myers) — to bring him down in order to save the republic. So, about halfway through the intermissionless two-hour play, Caesar is brutally murdered, lying on his back as the killers wash their hands in a pool of his blood. It’s a horrifically difficult scene to watch, since Eustis is so clear that his Caesar represents Donald Trump. (A line of dialogue is even changed to include Fifth Ave., where Trump Tower is.) Like Kathy Griffin holding up an art piece of Trump’s bloodied head, Eustis has gone too far, past the bounds of thoughtful, provocative theater into a dangerous and extremely disconcerting realm. Staging such a blatant mock assassination of the president of the United States is completely unjustified and indefensible.

Brutus (Corey Stoll) addresses the people of Rome in Oskar Eustis adaptation of Shakespeare tragedy (photo by Joan Marcus)

Brutus (Corey Stoll) addresses the people of Rome in Oskar Eustis’s adaptation of Shakespeare tragedy (photo by Joan Marcus)

Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln? Well, in the first half, when Caesar is offstage, it is very good. The relationship between Brutus and Cassius is well developed by a calm, soft-spoken Stoll and a bold, dynamic Thompson. Nikki M. James is moving as Brutus’s concerned wife, Portia, and Nick Selting is engaging as Lucius, Brutus’s dedicated servant. Even the murder scene itself is splendidly choreographed, were it not for whom the victim represents. And once Caesar is dead, the play falls apart, and not only because of the Trump references. Marvel’s delivery of Marc Antony’s famous speech gets lost in a murmuring crowd that is dispersed throughout the Delacorte, Roman guards have been turned into evil, robotlike cops running rampant on protesters, and, for some reason, Brutus sleeps in an insipid yellow college dorm room. In a promotional statement before previews began on May 23, Eustis, who last directed Hamlet at the Delacorte in 2008, said, “Julius Caesar can be read as a warning parable to those who try to fight for democracy by undemocratic means. To fight the tyrant does not mean imitating him.” It also does not mean staging his assassination, even in the name of art.

AUGUST WILSON’S JITNEY

Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 12, $79-$169
jitneybroadway.com
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

August Wilson’s Jitney, the first play he wrote in the American Century Cycle, also known as the Pittsburgh Cycle, is the last of the ten plays to reach Broadway, and all one can ask is, What took so long? Jitney is another masterpiece from the Pittsburgh-born playwright, whose cycle comprises ten plays, each set in a different decade of the twentieth century, capturing the black experience in America over one hundred years with grace, honesty, dignity, humor, and a soul-searching reality. Coincidentally, the film version of Wilson’s second play to hit Broadway, the Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning Fences, was released in December; the first movie based on a Wilson play, Fences garnered Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor (director Denzel Washington), Best Supporting Actress (Viola Davis), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Wilson). A Manhattan Theatre Club production at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, Jitney takes place in a ramshackle car service office in 1977 in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, where taxis won’t go. The gypsy cab company is run by the soft-spoken, straightforward Becker (John Douglas Thompson). His motley group of drivers consists of Turnbo (Michael Potts), a confrontational gossip who can’t stay out of other people’s business; YoungBlood (André Holland), an angry Vietnam vet trying to provide for his wife, Rena (Carra Patterson), and baby; Fielding (Anthony Chisholm), an aging, stumbling alcoholic who’s been separated from his wife for twenty-two years; and the practical, sensible Doub (Keith Randolph Smith), who is a kind of den father, keeping the peace while spouting such sage phrases as “Time go along and it come around.” Stopping by often is the sharply attired Shealy (Harvy Blanks), who takes phone calls at the station for his numbers racket, and Philmore (Ray Anthony Thomas), a regular customer who drinks himself into oblivion and then needs a ride home. Tensions rise when Becker eventually lets everyone know that the city will be tearing down the building soon, leaving them all jobless, and Becker’s son, Booster (Brandon J. Dirden), arrives after spending twenty years in prison, desperate to reestablish a relationship with his estranged father.

The Olivier Award-winning Jitney is a glorious play, a spectacular blending of poetic, incisive dialogue, powerful, soaring performances, and intimate, seamless staging by director Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who won a Tony for his role in Wilson’s Seven Guitars, later directed that work as well as the recent Signature revival of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Piano Lesson (starring Dirden), and was Wilson’s personal choice to portray him in the playwright’s autobiographical one-man show, How I Learned What I Learned. As with virtually every Wilson play, the cast is exceptional, bringing the beautifully developed characters to life in ways that make them feel like they’re your friends or acquaintances. Most of the actors have appeared in previous Wilson shows, including Thomas, who played Becker in Jitney at the Cincinnati Playhouse, and Chisholm, who has been playing Fielding since 1996 and once toured the Hill District with Wilson, who died in 2005 at the age of sixty. So every Wilson show has a welcoming family aspect surrounding it, and Jitney is no exception. When the play ended, I felt a tinge of sadness, wanting to spend more time with every one of these characters. The appropriately musty, messy set, by Tony-winning designer David Gallo (Wilson’s King Headley III, Gem of the Ocean, Radio Golf, 2000 production of Jitney at Second Stage), features ratty chairs and couches, newspaper clippings of Pittsburgh sports teams, an old pot-bellied stove, and large windows across the back of the stage that tantalizingly reveal who’s coming into the station next. Originally written in 1979 and rewritten in 1996, Jitney is very much about taking control of one’s life and being part of something bigger, regardless of the odds. At one point, Doub questions why Becker took so long to tell him about the station being torn down. “That ain’t what I mean, Becker,” Doub says. “It’s like you just a shadow of yourself. The station done gone downhill. Some people overcharge. Some people don’t haul. Fielding stay drunk. I just watch you and you don’t do nothing.” “What’s to be done?” Becker responds, adding “I just do the best I can do,” to which Doub boldly replies, “Sometime your best ain’t enough.” Like the rest of the dialogue, those words hit hard, resonating loud and clear in this stunning triumph.

THE ICEMAN COMETH

Theodore “Hickey” Hickman (Nathan Lane) dispenses a whole lot more than just free drinks in THE ICEMAN COMETH (photo by Richard Termine)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
Through March 15, $35-$180
BAM Talk with Brian Denney and Nathan Lane, moderated by Linda Winer, $25, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

You’d be hard-pressed to find a sorrier collection of forgotten men, real or fictitious, than the group of pathetic drunks populating Eugene O’Neill’s great American tragedy, The Iceman Cometh, now enjoying a stirring four-hour, forty-five-minute revival at BAM (if the word “enjoy” can be used in describing this staggering work in any way). Written in 1939 but not produced until after WWII, in 1946, the play opens with most of a ragtag bunch of bums asleep on tables in Harry Hope’s (Stephen Ouimette) Last Chance Saloon and rooming house on the Bowery, awaiting the annual arrival of Theodore “Hickey” Hickman (Nathan Lane), a traveling salesman who comes to the bar once a year to celebrate Harry’s birthday by buying drinks for everyone. While the other poor souls are passed out, former anarchist Larry Slade (Brian Dennehy), pouring himself another shot of whiskey, tells bartender Rocky Pioggi (Salvatore Inzerillo), “I’ll be glad to pay up — tomorrow. And I know my fellow inmates will promise the same. They’ve all a touching credulity concerning tomorrows. It’ll be a great day for them, tomorrow — the Feast of All Fools, with brass bands playing! Their ships will come in, loaded to the gunwales with cancelled regrets and promises fulfilled and clean slates and new leases!” A moment later, Rocky, who speaks in a tough dem and doze New Yorkese, says to Larry, “De old Foolosopher, like Hickey calls yuh, ain’t yuh? I s’pose you don’t fall for no pipe dream?” To which Larry explains, “I don’t, no. Mine are all dead and buried behind me. What’s before me is the comforting fact that death is a fine long sleep, and I’m damned tired, and it can’t come too soon for me.”

That mood of hopelessness sets the tone of the play, with Larry the leading “Foolosopher” of men whose pipe dreams have long since turned into nightmares, with nothing to look forward to except the next, preferably free, drink. Slowly but surely, the others awake, wondering where Hickey is. “I was dreamin’ Hickey come in de door, crackin’ one of dem drummer’s jokes, wavin’ a big bankroll and we was all goin’ be drunk for two weeks. Wake up and no luck,” gambler Joe Mott (John Douglas Thompson) opines. Also arising are Hope, circus man Ed Mosher (Larry Neumann Jr.), Harvard Law alum Willie Oban (John Hoogenakker), former Boer Commando General Piet Wetjoen (John Judd), former British Infantry Captain Cecil Lewis (John Reeger), former anarchist editor Hugo Kalmar (Lee Wilkof), young former anarchist Don Parritt (Patrick Andrews), and former war correspondent James Cameron, better known as “Jimmy Tomorrow” (James Harms). But these men — along with day bartender Chuck Morello (Marc Grapey), his prostitute girlfriend, Cora (Kate Arrington), and two streetwalkers who work for Chuck, Margie (Lee Stark) and Pearl (Tara Sissom) — have long ago run out of tomorrows. So they spend their days and nights slowly drinking themselves to death, some hanging on to those pipe dreams, waiting for Hickey like Vladimir and Estragon will do a few years later in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, except in this case, Godot/Hickey shows up, waving a wad of bills and waking everyone up — but it turns out to be not nearly as satisfying as they were anticipating.

Harry Hope (Stephen Ouimette) and Ed Mosher (Larry Neumann Jr.) are holding on to their pipe dreams in THE ICEMAN COMETH (photo by Richard Termine)

Harry Hope (Stephen Ouimette) and Ed Mosher (Larry Neumann Jr.) try to hold on to their pipe dreams in a downtrodden Bowery bar (photo by Richard Termine)

Dressed in a sharp suit and wearing an even more impressive smile, Hickey bursts in at the end of act one, but he is not quite the good-time guy they have all come to know. Instead, Hickey is no longer drinking, and he has arrived with a message for each and every one of his minions, determined to tell them the truth about their sad lives. He is like a boisterous Bill W., the traveling stock speculator who founded Alcoholics Anonymous. He’s going to buy them all drinks but make them pay in other ways, forcing them to look at what they’ve become. “If anyone wants to get drunk, if that’s the only way they can be happy, and feel at peace with themselves, why the hell shouldn’t they? They have my full and entire sympathy,” Hickey tells Harry. “I know all about that game from soup to nuts. I’m the guy that wrote the book. The only reason I’ve quit is — well, I finally had the guts to face myself and throw overboard the damned lying pipe dream that’d been making me miserable, and do what I had to do for the happiness of all concerned — and then all at once I found I was at peace with myself and I didn’t need booze any more. That’s all there was to it.” Of course, that’s not all there is to it, as is revealed during the next three acts.

Larry Slade (Brian Dennehy) is determined to drink himself to death in Eugene O’Neill’s classic American tragedy (photo by Richard Termine)

In 1990, Chicago’s Goodman Theatre staged a revival of The Iceman Cometh, directed by Robert Falls and starring Dennehy as Hickey. More than twenty years later, Dennehy told longtime collaborator Falls that he wanted to play Larry in a new production. Upon hearing that, Lane contacted Falls, explaining that he had always dreamed of playing Hickey. The show was a huge success in Chicago in 2012, and it is now a huge success at BAM, where it fits in wonderfully with the Harvey’s artfully distressed shabby chic interior. The Harvey doesn’t usually use a curtain, but it does so for The Iceman Cometh, revealing a different set for each act, designed by Kevin Depinet (inspired by John Conklin); there is actually an audible gasp when the third act begins in the main bar area, shown in an unusual narrow perspective leading to a doorway that offers a kind of freedom — and real life — that no one in the play seems to want. Natasha Katz’s lighting design often keeps things in the dark, echoing the lost dreams of these miserable characters. This nearly five-hour production, with three full intermissions, might be epic in scope, but it is beautifully paced by Falls, never dragging, instead moving with a sometimes exhilarating gait.

Dennehy (Love Letters, Death of a Salesman) fully captures the heartbreaking duality that exists inside Larry, a clearly intelligent man who has given up his reason for being, someone who could make a difference in the life of all those around him — especially Don, who is seeking him out as a father figure — but he has instead buried himself in the bottle. Lane (It’s Only a Play, The Nance) shines as Hickey, bringing an exuberance to the role that occasionally goes over the top, particularly in the final monologue, not quite hitting its darker quality, but he and Dennehy have a beguiling camaraderie together in these iconic roles. (The play premiered on Broadway in 1946 and has been revived on the Great White Way in 1973, 1985, and 1999; over the years, Hickey has been portrayed by James Barton, James Earl Jones, Dennehy, Lee Marvin, Kevin Spacey, and, most famously, Jason Robards onstage and on film, while Slade has been played by Robert Ryan, James Cromwell, Conrad Bain, Tim Pigott-Smith, and Patrick Stewart.) The Iceman Cometh has never been an easy show to put on or to sit through; don’t be surprised when you see a handful of people exiting the theater and hailing cabs at each intermission. But it’s their loss, as this is a staggering production that looks deeply into the heart of America with a raw honesty that compels audiences to look deep into their own hearts as well.