The Iceman Cometh

The Iceman Cometh is a play written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill in 1939. First published in 1940 the play premiered on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre on 9 October 1946, directed by Eddie Dowling where it ran for 136 performances to close on 15 March 1947.

Characters

• Harry Hope – proprietor of a saloon and rooming house
• Ed Mosher – Hope's brother-in-law, former circus man
• Pat McGloin – former police lieutenant
• Willie Oban – a Harvard Law School alumnus
• Joe Mott – a former proprietor of a Negro gambling house
• General Piet Wetjoen – former leader of a Boer commando
• Captain Cecil Lewis – former Captain of British infantry
• James Cameron "Jimmy Tomorrow" – former Boer War correspondent
• Hugo Kalmar – former editor of anarchist periodicals
• Larry Slade – former Syndicalist-Anarchist
• Rocky Pioggi – night bartender
• Don Parritt - teenager, son of former Anarchist
• Pearl – street walker
• Margie – street walker
• Cora – street walker
• Chuck Morello – day bartender
• Theodore Hickman "Hickey" – a hardware salesman
• Moran - police detective
• Lieb - police detective

Plot summary

The Iceman Cometh is set in Harry Hope's decidedly downmarket Greenwich Village saloon and rooming house, in 1912. The patrons, who are all men except for three women who are prostitutes, are all dead-end alcoholics who spend every possible moment seeking oblivion in each others' company and trying to con or wheedle free drinks from...
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