The Iceman Cometh

John Haag plays Theodore Hickey in Eugene O’Neill’s play The Iceman Cometh.

johnhaaghead2John Haag started acting in New York in off-off Broadway and regional theaters. Since moving to Massachusetts, John has done theater, industrial films, and voiceovers, and has recorded 15 audiobooks for commercial production and over 200 titles for the Library of Congress.  He started studying with Wren two years ago. You can find samples of his work on Audible.com, Audiofile Magazine, and on his website, http://johnhaag.biz/.

From John: “Hickey is a complex character. I struggled to understand why he would regale his fellow drunks with the story of his lifelong struggle with the bottle and marital infidelity, the cause of all the guilt he feels at having inflicted so much pain upon his wife. Hickey, whose unspeakable act of self-destruction frees him from his own “pipe dreams,” finds his own redemption in an attempt to free his friends from the same fate. I began to realize that Hickey uses his salesman’s charm in a last desperate attempt to convince his fellow sufferers to give up their own “pipe dreams” which have enslaved them to the bottle. Alcoholic that he is, his moods shift instantly from self-loathing to grandiosity, from self-pity to righteous anger, often in the space of a few lines. Wren encouraged me to find all the colors, to try it in ways I would have never considered, and I’ve continued to do that each time I’ve gone back to it. I found working on this piece at once daunting and exhilarating.”

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