Two time Academy-Award winner and Tony Award Winner Denzel Washington is set to make his return to Broadway next Spring as Hickey in a new production of Eugene O’Neill’s four-act epic The Iceman Cometh. The revival will be produced by Scott Rudin with multiple Tony winner George C. Wolfe taking on directing duties.
The Iceman Cometh is an epic 1939 drama, first produced in 1946, set in a down-market New York bar and following the circuitous conversations of its go-nowhere patrons. The one bright light in this dim world is the occasional visits of Theodore Hickey, a colorful traveling salesman whose garrulous manner appears to bring some relief from the atmosphere of hopeless desolation and empty dreams. That role will be played by Washington in the upcoming revival.
The drama is notoriously known as one of the playwright’s most demanding works — requiring stamina from both its actors and audiences — with full stagings running nearly five hours.
The Iceman Cometh premiered on Broadway in 1946, and was last revived on the Great White Way in 1998 in a production starring Kevin Spacey as Hickey. Washington’s last starring role on Broadway was in 2014 when he top-lined A Raisin in the Sun at the Ethel Barrymore Theater. Prior to that, he appeared in a 2010 revival of August Wilson’s Fences, winning the Tony Award for best actor in a play. Both those productions were brought to Broadway by Rudin, who also last year produced Washington’s screen version of Fences.
Performances are set to begin March 22, 2018 ahead of an April 26 opening. The limited 14-week engagement is set for New York’s Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre located at 242 W 45th St, New York, NY 10036.
Source: Playbill