In The Loop Magazine Theatre Review: Gypsy Iceboy Lee, Goodman Theatre's World Premiere of Iceboy! Or the Completely Untrue Story of How Eugene O'Neill Came to Write The Iceman Cometh

Theatre Review: Gypsy Iceboy Lee, Goodman Theatre’s World Premiere of Iceboy! Or the Completely Untrue Story of How Eugene O’Neill Came to Write The Iceman Cometh

Jul 03, 2026 admin_bitlc Features, Music News, Musical Theatre, Reviews 0

By Peter Thomas Ricci

While contemplating Goodman Theatre’s phenomenal world premiere of ‘Iceboy! Or the Completely Untrue Story of How Eugene O’Neill Came to Write The Iceman Cometh,’ I considered the most succinct way to describe this zany, sincere, hilarious, thrilling musical, and the best one I could come up with was the following: ‘Gypsy’ meets ‘The Book of Mormon’ meets ‘All About Eve’ meets ‘All Creatures Great and Small.’

Set in New York City in 1939, ‘Iceboy’ (I’ll shorten from here on out, although I am forever a sucker for elongated titles) principally concerns Vera Vimm, a fading Broadway star who, in a stab for publicity, shells out nearly $500,000 for a 40,000-year-old Neanderthal frozen in ice. Played with acidic wit, flighty hilarity, and ballsy determination by Megan Mullally (yes, previously of ‘Will and Grace’), Vera could be the sister of Bette Davis’ legendary character Margo Channing, and her egoism reaches new heights when she insists on starring in the latest play by her long-suffering boyfriend Floyd (a delightful Cedric Yarbrough) – an overwrought kitchen-sink drama about NYC’s garment workers – despite the fact that her real-life age of 59 is far beyond the central character’s teenage disposition.

The play (and Vera especially) is roundly lampooned and lambasted, but further coaxing Vera’s ego is the musical’s animating moment – the Neanderthal emerges from the ice, fit as a fiddle! Immediately adopting the young man as a son (and delighting in the additional attention it grants her), Vera seems impervious to any comment or critique of her outlandish ways…until a series of unfortunate events turns her world upside down.

It would be a disservice to the play’s wild, delightful unpredictability to try to encompass its many elements, which include: Vera’s secretary, who claims to suffer from “forever menopause”; Vera’s butler, a traumatized actor forever in-character as Frankenstein’s monster; the golden-voiced Iceboy (Broadway star Grey Henson) and his burgeoning understanding of 1930s America; and of course, Eugene O’Neil himself, played with all the dry wit and twinkling eyes we expect from Nick Offerman.

The Goodman has a terrific track record of musical premieres – I still think back fondly to seeing Patti Lupone and Christine Ebersole in ‘War Paint’ in 2016 – and ‘Iceboy’ carries on that stellar tradition: Mark Hollmann’s music and lyrics are engaging and subversive, but never cheap and underwhelming. The book by Jay Reiss (who also provided lyrics) and Erin Quinn Purcell develops the various characters with exceptional pacing in between the songs. JoAnn M. Hunter’s choreography is sly, engaging, and fully complementary to the show’s outstanding ensemble. And lastly, Marc Bruni’s direction holds everything together just so – we all feel things could fall apart at any minute, and that unpredictability is thrilling to behold.

But 24 hours removed from seeing ‘Iceboy,’ I’m most impressed with the show’s heart and sincerity. ‘Gypsy’ is a musical about one of theater’s most toxic mothers, a woman of such denial and delusion that she alienates everyone who cares about her. And while Vera certainly has plenty of Rose in her, ‘Iceboy’ distinguishes itself with a final act in which the protagonist truly does learn all the right lessons, and the audience is gifted one of the more surprisingly heartwarming found-families I’ve encountered on an American stage. And of course, there is the terrific work of Mullally, who reminds us of how vastly superior her talents are to a 1990s sitcom.

*Extended through August 9

For tickets and more info, click here