DENZEL BACK TO B’WAY
Starring in ‘Iceman’
Denzel Washington will return to Broadway this spring in “The Iceman Cometh,” The Post has learned.
A 14-week run of Eugene O’Neill’s drama, to be directed by multi-Tony awardwinner George C. Wolfe, is set to start March 22 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre.
“I’m very excited to come back to Broadway in this great play and to be working on it with George Wolfe,” Washington told The Post.
Scott Rudin, fresh off a home run with Bette Midler in “Hello, Dolly!” is producing.
Washington will play Hickey, a charismatic traveling salesman with a dark secret who shows up at a Greenwich Village saloon to buy the drunken regulars one last round.
Hickey’s considered one of the most challenging roles in the American theater, along with Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman,” Stanley Kowalski (“Streetcar Named Desire”) and George (“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?”)
Among the distinguished actors who’ve played him are Jason Robards, James Earl Jones, Kevin Spacey and Nathan Lane.
Sources say Washington has long been an O’Neill fan. As a student at Fordham University in the 1970s, he made his theatrical debut in “The Emperor Jones.”
O’Neill wrote “Iceman Cometh” in 1939, inspired by Maxim Gorky’s “The Lower Depths.” He based many of the characters on real-life drunks he remembered from his heavy-drinking days at Jimmy-thePriest’s waterfront saloon on Fulton Street.
Fearing audiences would reject the play for its unsparing look at life and its illusions, O’Neill delayed its Broadway premiere until 1946.
Reviews were mixed, but subsequent revivals cemented its reputation as an American classic.
Washington, an Oscar winner for “Glory” and “Training Day,” is one of Hollywood’s most reliable stars.
His track record on Broadway is just as enviable.
Playing Brutus, he sold out a 2005 production of “Julius Caesar.” The 2010 revival of August Wilson’s “Fences,” in which he starred alongside Viola Davis, grossed more than $1 million a week. Both reprised their Tony-winning roles in the 2016 movie.
Washington’s previous Broadway outing, in the 2014 revival of “A Raisin in the Sun,” shattered records at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, where it opened with advance ticket sales of $12 million.