ROBARDS ON ‘ICEMAN’ AND O’NEILL

Eugene O’Neill’s massive “The Iceman Cometh” opens Wednesday at the Doolittle Theatre, staged by Jose Quintero and starring Jason Robards. Robards and Quintero first did the play in 1956 at Off-Broadway’s Circle-in-the-Square Theatre, a revival that established Robards as an importantactor and re-established O’Neill as a living presence in the American theater. O’Neill’s foremost biographer, Louis Sheaffer, discusses “Iceman’s” genesis and its meaning, while Robards describes his sometimes troubling experiences as an O’Neill actor.

B arnard Hughes was saying that even those of you who had done “Iceman” before didn’t remember much about it. So this was like a new play for everybody.

It was. People say, “Oh, you must remember,” but I’m here to tell you--you don’t. Also, there’s a whole experience in living now that wasn’t there the first time. The tragedy of a guy in his 50s who kills his wife--I understand a lot more about that than I did at 33.

But with O’Neill it’s a new beginning every day. His plays drive you to the conclusion. But if you’ve rehearsed it well, and set it up well, and come in with it fresh, you find new things all the time. Even now I’ll say to myself before going on as Hickey: “I’m really going to sell these guys this time. They’re really gonna buy it.”

What’s it like to rehearse with Quintero?

Jose starts telling stories about his mother and his father and his brother, who was a priest or something. He goes on and on, with the terror of life, and the family, and the guilts, and all of a sudden you realize: He’s applying it to the play. Doing the play, he’s very specific.

You’ve played Hickey in “Iceman,” and Erie Smith in “Hughie,” and Jamie O’Neill in “Moon for the Misbegotten” and “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” Don’t you find that they’re the same character?

No, I don’t. Erie Smith in “Hughie” is a guy who’s hanging around the edges of the rackets in New York. He’s staying over at the Knickerbocker Hotel on 45th Street. I stayed in that same damn toilet when I first came to New York. Jamie--he was a brilliant guy who failed through drink, in a family that was all messed up. He’s sunk to cheap hotels, but he’s an entirely different guy.

Who’s Hickey?

Hickey’s a salesman, a drummer from the Midwest whose father was a Jerry Falwell-type preacher. He comes to Harry Hope’s saloon once a year to celebrate Harry’s birthday. He loves to sit there and tell lies and get drunk and “forget love,” as O’Neill says.

However, this time he’s not that guy. He’s now the true outsider. He thinks that he’s found peace. Because he has no more illusions about himself. He thinks he’s faced reality. But in the end he finds that he has a bigger pipe dream than all the rest of ‘em put together. And then he’s taken to the asylum. He’s removed. Despair is removed. By hope.

But it’s a false hope.

But, I mean, what isn’t? What about this world? Do you want to face the reality of this world? And yet, as O’Neill says: Man lives.

Did you ever meet O’Neill?

The Theatre Guild invited a group of us students at the American Academy to a preview of the original “Iceman” back in ’46. Paul Shyre said to me, “See that guy standing in the back, with those eyes? That’s O’Neill.” But by the time I looked he was gone.

But you knew Carlotta, his widow .

Funny about Carlotta. Once I had played Jamie in “Long Day’s Journey,” Carlotta would get angry with me every time she saw me. Because she hated Jamie. She couldn’t separate the role from the actor. Hickey was removed, but Jamie was. . . .

Her brother-in-law.

Yes. Here’s something else that’s funny. One night Helen Keller came backstage after the show. With Carlotta, by the way. She reached out and she touched my face . . . and she slapped the hell out of me! She said, in that strange voice, “Ba-a-a-d boy.” She didn’t like me either. It wasn’t me, it was Jamie.

So when people talk about actors being inhabited by a character . . . you really have been. By Jamie more than anyone. Maybe because my father was an actor and, in a strange way, did what O’Neill’s father did with “The Count of Monte Cristo.” My Dad just kept doing B films until he ran himself into the ground. My mother was absent, like O’Neill’s. I had a younger brother, like O’Neill. Maybe the whole thing was too much for me. Freddie March even looked like my Dad.

Anyway I couldn’t separate my life on the stage. I’d go out afterward and get drunk and try to sleep it off and, ooh. I couldn’t lose him. I’d say, I gotta get rid of this guy! And as the show (“Long Day’s Journey”) went on--I played it two years, you know--I got more and more into it. And that’s a terrible syndrome to get into.

Yet you played Jamie again in “A Moon for the Misbegotten.”

And I got sober on that. It’s funny that it would be Jamie again. Had I gone on drinking, I would have died. I almost did anyway. But I stopped in the middle of that run. I took the road that Jamie didn’t take. I said, I can’t die. Because I will die if I keep this up.

I remember you and Colleen Dewhurst in “Moon for the Misbegotten” at the Ahmanson in ’74.

I hope you were sitting close.

What came across was that, although the play was much too long, the length was part of the journey.

This is a long one, too. Will people come down to Vine Street to see a five-hour play after working all day? That’s what worries me. Originally they performed it with a dinner break, you know. After awhile they cut it out. People didn’t come back, or they came back loaded and started yelling from the audience, “Take your filthy play.”

How do you manage a part that long?

The other guys have a much tougher job. I only have 12 minutes in the first act. I have 10 minutes in the second, and then off for about 15, then 15 minutes on. Third act, I don’t come on until halfway through. Then I do that narrative, and leave. Donald Moffat and the others are on from the word go.

Do you remember much about the original “Iceman”?

James Barton played Hickey. I remember his face, but not what he did. Face like a skull. What I remember is how it all stayed in the same mood. It never grew into anything.

You played Hickey in the old Play of the Week version of “Iceman” in 1960, but when it came to making a film of it (1973), Lee Marvin got the part.

With Lee, they were ready to put money into it. They weren’t going to put it in with me , especially not then. I wasn’t doing so well.

I didn’t see the film. I don’t know that Hickey is Lee’s part. You really have to sing an aria.

Literally an aria? You have to notate it?

You really have to prepare it well. As I’ve gotten more and more into shape--I’ve started a whole cardiac program, exercise and diet--I’ve found I’m getting much more out of the show. It was wonderful to find I could get a thought out on a breath. It was like Shakespeare in the old days. I had gotten away from that in this documentary acting I’ve been doing in films.

You like things with a little sweep to them.

That’s what I like, yes. Freddie March and I once did a scene from “Count of Monte Cristo” at a benefit. Oh, he was terrific. You felt the surge. You accepted the fact that he was impassioned. I love that kind of theater.

Make-believe. That’s what’s fun. That’s what it’s all about. It’s not a lot of self-analysis. And the better you make believe, the more the audience makes believe with you, and the more wonderful the evening is.

Either that, or they walk out. You know that little change in “Moon for the Misbegotten,” when I fall asleep in her arms? Colleen used to say in the dark during the change, “How many are we losing? Tell ‘em to come back, the damned play is not over.” I’d say, “Come back. We got another act.”