NEW YORK—“Pipe dreams,” those fleeting, rose-colored reminders of yesterday and ethereal promises for tomorrow, figure significantly in Eugene O'Neill’s 1946 drama “The Iceman Cometh.” However, the current Broadway production too often fails to look beyond these dreams and examine the pain therein.
In 1912, the New York City saloon and rooming house run by Harry Hope (Colm Meaney) is the last stop on the highway of broken dreams. The establishment is populated by drunken relics who have long since retreated from the world. As Larry Slade (David Morse), a former anarchist now content to sit on the sidelines of life, explains, “No one here has to worry about where they’re going next, because there is no farther they can go.”
