The Iceman Cometh

Eugene O'Neill was the first American playwright to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. He completed *The Iceman Cometh* in 1939, but he delayed production until after the war, when it enjoyed a long run of performances in 1946 after receiving mixed reviews. Three years after O'Neill's death, Jason Robards starred in a Broadway revival that brought new critical attention to O'Neill's darkest and most nihilistic play. In the half century since, *The Iceman Cometh* has gained enormously in stature, and many critics now recognize it as one of the greatest plays in American drama. *The Iceman Cometh* focuses on a group of alcoholics and misfits who endlessly discuss but never act on their dreams, and Hickey, the traveling salesman determined to strip them of their pipe dreams.