Opera
Ballet & Dance
Drama

The Iceman Cometh
2006/2007 SEASON PLAY

The Iceman Cometh

THE PIT


STAFF
Written by : Eugene O'Neill
Translated by : Numasawa Koji
Directed by : Kuriyama Tamiya
     
Artistic Director : Kuriyama Tamiya
Produced by : New National Theatre, Tokyo

CAST
Ichimura Masachika, Okamoto Kenichi, Kiba Katsumi etc.

PERFORMANCES
June / July
2006
18 19 20 21 22 23 24 26 27 28 29 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
1:00           X X         X X           X X
2:00     X         X X         X X X        
6:30 X X   X X         X X           X X    
Doors will open 30minutes before the opening of the performance.

ADVANCE TICKETS
  Available from Saturday 28 April, 2007 at 10:00am.
To order tickets, please call +81-3-5352-9999 (10:00am-6:00pm).
Internet ticket reservation available through the following Websites.(Japanese only)
http://pia.jp/t
http://eplus.jp/

TICKET PRICES (with tax)
Seat A B
Price(yen) 5,250 3,150
*Seat Z(¥1,500): Sold at the NNTT Box Office and some Ticket Pia outlets on the performance date. One ticket per person. No phone reservations.
*Same day student tickets (50% off, except Seat Z): Sold at the NNTT Box Office and some Ticket Pia outlets on the performance date. One ticket per person. No phone reservations. Students must bring a valid student ID.

handbill [A Midsummer Night’s Dream]

Late Masterpiece by O’Neill to Be Finale of Kuriyama Tamiya’s Career as New National Theatre, Tokyo Artistic Director:The Experience of Despair when Facing Our True Selves
Eugene O’Neill (1888–1953), a U.S. playwright presented with the Nobel Prize in Literature, single-handedly lifted American theatre of those days to the level of European theatre with the appearance of his works on Broadway in the 1920s. The Iceman Cometh is a masterpiece from O’Neill’s later years when he had difficulty writing due to a neuroparalytic disorder, and the work is a deep expression of the view of life that O’Neill arrived at in his maturity. It features despair toward God, resignation toward life, and the grapple with death. The New National Theatre, Tokyo has staged to critical acclaim two works by O’Neill: Long Day’s Journey into Night, the greatest autobiographical play in the history of theatre, and Mourning Becomes Electra, a masterpiece from O’Neill’s middle years (winner of the Grand Prix of the 4th Asahi Performing Arts Awards).
The Iceman Cometh is set in a down-market saloon in New York City where a group of dead-end patrons gather to get drunk on cheap liquor and to escape through talk of their idle dreams. When a man visits the saloon and expounds on true peace of heart, the regulars have the crutch of the dreams they have clung to taken away and they must face their true selves.
The interesting and foolish characteristics exhibited by human beings as they face despair and death are depicted from O’Neill’s unique perspective. With the New National Theatre, Tokyo’s talented cast that can richly portray the complex psychology of this play and the direction by Kuriyama Tamiya for whom this will be the finale for his last season as artistic director, The Iceman Cometh is sure to be a performance that, like the previous two productions, touches the hearts of audiences.

 

<Synopsis>
The play is set in a saloon in downtown New York in the summer of 1921. The dead-end regulars are seeking solace in drinking cheap liquor and talking of their idle dreams. Enter salesman Hickey. On his yearly visits to the saloon, he usually treats the patrons to some drinks and regales them with jokes and stories that titillate their dreams which they are unlikely to ever realize. But tonight Hickey is different. He starts to expound on having peace of heart. What’s happened to him?



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