Brustein is a noted literary critic as well as a respected director of drama. In this essay he reviews a 1985 revival of The Iceman Cometh that features the 1956 Circle in the Square production's star and director—Jason Robards and Jose Quintero. The critic finds that both the play and the creative talents behind its staging have aged well.

When The Iceman Cometh was first produced by the Theater Guild in the mid-1940s, hostile intellectual critics invidiously compared it with Ibsen's The Wild Duck and Gorky's The Lower Depths. After it was successfully revived ten years later by Circle in the Square, commentators began to recognize that, for all its clumsy dialogue, repetitiveness, and schematic plotting, the play was a great work that surpassed even those distinguished influences in depth and power. Today, almost 40 years after its initial appearance with James Barton and Dudley Digges, The Iceman...