Eugene O’Neill’s plays are sadly neglected nowadays, they are too long and pensive for modern audiences. I played Hickey in the Iceman Cometh in the early seventies in less than perfect conditions, I had ten days rehearsal, without the rest of the cast, for a revival of the play in the Abbey. It’s a long play, curtain up at 6:30, down at 11. But what a night O’Neill gives us!
The play is set in Harry Hope’s bar, a seedy joint in New York, populated by has beens and never weres, failed anarchists, soldiers, journalists, lawyers, cops and hookers, all with one common bond: drink. They drink to blot out the past, and to blot out the present, but all will be fine tomorrow, when they stop drinking. It’s a palace of pipedreams. They are waiting for Hickey to arrive, to celebrate Harry’s birthday, but when he arrives he has changed, he isn’t drinking. Hickey had no pipedreams, but his wife had. She hoped and prayed that Hickey would stop drinking, stay home instead of going on binges in Harry Hope’s with his down-and-out buddies. Hickey knows how much she loves him, how willing she is always to forgive him, he knows the pain he causes her, and he knows that he will never change. So he kills her, in her sleep, so she has her pipedreams forever.
We all have dreams, the things that will change our lives - the plastic surgery, the new car, the new job. And after that, what’s next? What’s the next pipedream? Better by far to live in the now, tomorrow will come anyway, whether we like it or not. “Look to this day for it is life, the very life of life”.

Clive Geraghty