The Iceman Cometh

The Iceman Cometh is a play written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill in 1939. First published in 1946, the play premiered on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre on October 9, 1946, directed by Eddie Dowling, where it ran for 136 performances before closing on March 15, 1947. It has subsequently been adapted for the screen multiple times. The work tells the story of a number of alcoholic dead-enders who live together in a flop house above a saloon and what happens to them when the most outwardly "successful" of them embraces sobriety. New York Times theater critic Brooks Atkinson, at the beginning of the telecast of Sidney Lumet's 1960 television adaptation of The Iceman Cometh, called it "a harsh and ruthless drama.... It is one of America's greatest plays" 14 years after it opened to mixed reviews on Broadway. Many years later, the 1999 Broadway revival, based on a 1998 London production starring Kevin Spacey as Hickey, was staged at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. During a press conference before the 1946 opening of the stage play, O'Neill said that he believed the secret to happiness was contained within one sentence, quoted from Mark 8:36: "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"