A Cast of Leaders

Act Four: Cue the Star

"Hello, Gang!" Everyone has been waiting for Kevin Spacey. His entrance, as Hickey in "The Iceman Cometh," does not come until 45 minutes into the first act. The year is 1912, and the scene is Harry Hope's bar, a skid-row flophouse where "no one . . . has to worry about where they're going next, because there is no farther they can go."

Tomorrow is Harry's birthday, and Hickey drops in to celebrate -- as he often does. Hickey is a salesman, and a very successful one. Tonight, the drinks will be on him. By the time Hickey finally bursts through the swinging doors of the bar, the drunks who have been waiting for their old pal, and for his generous wallet, are half-mad from thirst.

Harry, the bar's owner, used to be a local politician. Then his wife died, and for 20 years he has literally not set foot outside the bar. "I'll go out soon. Take a walk around the ward, see all the friends I used to know . . . My birthday . . . that'd be the right time to turn over a new leaf. Sixty. That ain't too old."

Willie had studied to be a lawyer, until he found "the loophole of whiskey." He's going to take that bar exam . . . soon: "I'll be straightened out and on the wagon in a day or two." Joe is going to start his own gambling house, if he can just keep his hands from shaking. Jimmy is going to give up drinking and get back his old job at the newspaper. He's been saying that for so long that everyone has taken to calling him Jimmy Tomorrow.

For the fools and failures who populate Harry's bar, Hickey's return offers another chance for them to trot out their "pipe dreams" one more time -- just to see if anybody still believes what they say.

For Kevin Spacey, appearing in this play marks the beginning of a risky new phase of an already extraordinary career. Since winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for "The Usual Suspects" (1995), he has been one of the busiest actors in Hollywood, starring in "L.A. Confidential," "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," "A Time to Kill," and "Hurlyburly." Yet here he is on Broadway, acting in one of the most difficult plays ever written. And Spacey is not just tackling the leading role in "Iceman." He is coproducing the play as well.

At almost four and a half hours in length, with a cast of 19 and a crew that must be paid overtime every night, The Iceman Cometh is so difficult and so costly to produce that in the 60 years since Eugene O'Neill wrote it, there has been only one successful production—in 1956, starring Jason Robards as Hickey.

For Kara Medoff, the lucky student who has served as a production assistant on the show, there is no question about which performer has offered her the most powerful leadership model. "Kevin Spacey," she says without hesitation. "He's taking an incredible chance with this production. And he makes sure that nobody treats him like a star. He doesn't want his name on the marquee. He doesn't want his name above the title in the ads. He even had some walls in the dressing rooms torn down so that he could share one big dressing room with seven other male leads. He makes sure that all of the people connected with the show feel that they're part of something really special and that they're important."

All of the actors, including Spacey, make the minimum scale for a Broadway actor, $1,135 a week. Any profit that the show makes will be distributed to the cast. The top ticket price, a whopping $100, not only reflects the show's high production costs; it also helps subsidize several hundred seats each night for a segment of the public that Spacey feels the theater must attract if it's going to survive -- students.

Given his commitment to introducing a new generation to the theater, it is no wonder that he has agreed to join the Duke students after the performance for a conversation about the play, the dreamers in it, and their own dreams. And so, near midnight, the students gather at Dorsay, an elegant new restaurant in the theater district, to wait for Spacey to make his second entrance of the evening.

After four and a half hours of watching a bunch of drunks spill their guts and their whiskey, Natalie is burning to know one thing: "How on earth do you feel hope at the end of this play?"

"How can you not?" asks Spacey. "It's a play about love and friendship, and that's ultimately what these people give to each other. When should you help your friends? When should you enable them? When should you tell them the truth? When should you pin them against the wall and say that they're full of shit? These are all questions that this play is about."

On the question of careers -- finding one or letting one find you -- Spacey has his own story to tell. "I was kicked out of military school," he offers. "A guidance counselor in the seventh grade suggested that I had excessive energy and that I might channel it into some elective courses. I got into this theater class, and I suddenly felt I belonged. I had never felt I'd belonged before."