In late ’85 I caught Jose Quintero‘s Broadway revival of Eugene O’Neill‘s The Iceman Cometh, in which 63-year-old Jason Robards played Theodore “Hickey” Hickman. Quintero and Robards were the original fathers and life-givers of this play, which had opened in October 1946 and closed after only 163 performances. Their 1956 Off-Broadway production, staged just after O’Neill’s death, bestowed the proper lustre. The ’85 revival was a kind of half reunion, half celebration of this feat. I remember that Robards dyed his hair brown as Hickey was supposed to be somewhere in his early 40s. Barnard Hughes and Donald Moffat costarred. It was a really long sit (the 1973 John Frankenheimer film version ran 239 minutes) but Robards, man…wow. Glad I was there.
