Will Iceman cometh to Broadway?

Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune with thoughts on The Iceman Cometh which closes Sunday in Chicago.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/theater/theaterloop/ct-ott-0615-jones-loop-20120615,0,1342631.story

The New York Times in today's paper paints a somewhat rosier picture about the possibility of a transfer to Broadway of the acclaimed Chicago production of THE ICEMAN COMETH, despite producer Rudin's bowing out of the picture. I hope it happens. I would pay top dollar to see it.

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If Rudin hold the rights to any possible Broadway transfer, how could it happen without him? This is not me being snarky, I really don't know. Would he be able to sell those rights or something?

Besides the size of the cast, I assume with the over-4-hour running time, there are no two-performance days, limiting the run to six shows a week. Almost impossible to make a profit.

I saw it in Chicago. I didn't really like it much, but Nathan Lane, as always, was fantastic.

I think the only way it could happen is if Lincoln Center does it. The show will never be a moneymaking venture. It would have to be done by a non-profit with sizable overhead and sizable space. Lincoln Center's really the only place I can think of.

I agree with defyinggravity. I think the main problem with the production was the staging. There was so little movement on the stage (actors would be in one position for up to twenty minutes at a time) that everything just felt incredibly slow. Acts two and three were the most entertaining (there was the most movement here) but in acts one and four, most of the supporting cast hardly moved a muscle for the majority of it. Also, some of the lighting was particularly annoying. In the opening scene, the lights come up very slightly on the scene and get brighter ever so slowly during the course of the first act, but the end of the act is still fairly dim. For the first five minutes, it was impossible to see anything other than the faint outlines of the people on the stage, so I (and several others, too) could not focus on the play at the beginning because it was so hard to see anything. It was a very bad opening that did not exactly draw me in.

That said, I thought all of the actors, especially Nathan Lane, were very good. The set design was also beautiful. However, the play felt so slow that I couldn't get into it.

I agree that this might have trouble finding an audience in New York. This was a huge hit in Chicago, but so was Chinglish last summer (also at the Goodman), and that show found little success in New York. I'm sure that Nathan Lane and Brian Dennehy will draw in some fans, but New York has such a different audience that it's hard to tell if they will go see the show. Before Chinglish, wasn't the last production from the Goodman that went to Broadway Desire Under the Elms? That didn't do very well, either.

^ That could have something to do with the fact that there were only six performances a week, and it was a limited run of less than 100 performances. Even though it was the first play to charge $100 a ticket (if I recall correctly), it would have been hard to turn a profit in such a short period of time on only six performances a week.

The Lane production is only doing six performances a week in Chicago, but given the jump in ticket prices, it could probably turn a profit (as Salesman did only having seven performances a week). But I guess that also depends on how much of a draw Lane is in a straight play, especially a five-hour straight play. Something that's an event in Chicago doesn't necessarily mean it will be an event on Broadway.

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