The Iceman Cometh

THE PIT

*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.

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.