The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 31

Cometh the Iceman, 7 No 1204 cometh the star Polo mints Film stars sometimes shrink on stage. But Kevin Spacey, ho plays Hickey in the Almeida's four-hour-plus revival of O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, not only brings to the role a long theatrical pedigree hut a spellbinding technical assurance: even more importantly, in Howard Davies's exemplary production, he is part of a first-rate ensemble that gives the play the copious detail of an American genre painting. Set in Harry Hope's dilapidated bar in downtown New York in 1912, it confronts the great theme that dominates modern drama from The Wild Duck to A Streetcar Named Desire: whether human happiness depends on consoling life-lies or confrontation with reality. O'Neill's sundry barflies, lumped in drunken torpor as we take our seats, are all the non-walking emotional wounded sustained by cheap whisky and pipe-d reams. Only with the arrival of Hickey, a travelling salesman and sudden, messianic convert to truth-telling, are they forced to act out their red-eyed fantasies with predictably disastrous results.

You could easily make out a case against O'Neill's play. He never uses one word where 20 will do: typically Larry Slade, the ex-anarchist and grandstand philosopher who acts as a sardonic chorus, says of Hope's watering-hole "It's the No Chance Saloon. It's Bedrock Bar. The End of the Line Cafe. The Bottom of the Sea Rathskeller." You kind of get the point.

In arguing that mankind needs its protective illusions, O'Neill also seems to demolish any hope of Utopia: again in the words of Larry, "you can't build a marble temple out a mixture of mud and manure." But can you generalise about all humanity from a cross-section of bar-room derelicts? The great thing about O'Neill as a play wright, however, is that he has the virtues of his defects. He turns repetition into a dramatic strength, drawing us into the hermetic circularity of these topers' fantasies: he even has the wit and confidence to send up his characters' prolixity so that, in the midst of Hickey's final confession, an exasperated Harry cries "Get it over, you long-winded bastard." Even O'Neill's defeatism is balanced by the quality that, I believe, gives the play its universality: its warning against ersatz messiahs whose reformist zeal camouflages personal guilt. Just as Ibsen's truth-telling idealist, Gregers Werle in The Wild Duck, is driven by filial revenge, so O'Neill's Hickey is spurr. on the need to expiate a domestic crime. The play has become more, not less, topical as America, in particular, seems filled with raucous evangelists and self-help merchants assuaging their own neuroses.

When an idealist turns up at your door, suggests O'Neill, check out his credentials. The play's currency is reinforced by Spacey's interpretation of Hickey as a horn-again zealot. He reminds us. crucially, that Hickey is not only a salesman hut also the son of an Indiana preacher: he brings to the role the dapper earnestness, the ability to absorb criticism and the blithe unauarcness of reality of the blinkered pulpiteer. There's an hilarious moment when, on being confronted by the squashed barflies after their brief contact xv ith the outside world, he cheerily cries, "Well, how are you all getting along?" Spacey also makes the point that the real danger of the comer! lies in his desperate sincerity: he handles dicker's final confessional monologue brilliantly, turning expiation of his own sin into a form of faith-healing, touching each of the bar's occupants in turn as if they were his disciples.

Larry, the bar-room philosopher plagued by the son of one of his old anarchist lovers, is no less pivotal a role: a barely recognisable Tim Pigotl-Smith, his bald pate surrounded by greying tufts of unruly hair, catches exactly the weary nihilism of the lapsed agitator. Seeing through Hickey, he also observes the disruption he causes with cackling, mordant glee. And, from a remarkable ensemble, I would pick out Patrick Godfrey and Nicholas Day as a pair of warring old soldiers who fought on opposite sides in the Boer war, Clarke Peters as an angry ex-gambler smarting under a barrage of racial insults and Duncan Bell as a wrecked law-school alumnus. Boh Crowley's set, with its long, curved bar, tacky frosted mirrors, flophouse beds suspended from the Mall and faint projections of the outside world, has exactly the right stylised realism. And Howard Davics, who directed the 1976 Aldwych production, is sensilive bolh to O'Neill's tragi-comcdy and his fundamental argument: thai humankind canno! hear very much reality and that the zeal of the Salvationist is, more often than not, an echo of private disturbance.

MS Al the Almeida. London N1 (01 -359-44041 to May 23 Age. this month Appearance. )riginall "tin peppermint nun niaile Imlk In RovvntiecV Mmm. Catchy.

Where's Alastair Campbell when you need him? Now universally known as the mint ith the Hole! Ooer, missus! l.imugh egregious insinuations alre.uh. Is there any fxissihilitv tit discussing tlm Urea! British Confection and lop-selling mint brand ithotit reducing it to the level ol playground rihaldrx No. You might upset the ladies who make up two-thirds of the Polo-buying public. It worries me not. May you choke on the 147 I'olos consumed every second in the I Stop.

You're scaring me. Can't think of a better way to celebrate the bicentenary of the Cliff Kieliard of the sweetie world predictable, wholesome and still estv enough lo get granny excited (pensioners account for a quarter i if the Polo-buy ing public). And my taxes go towards keeping them in dentures. Pay for your own fillings, OAP scroungers! Worry not. In 1994, Kowntrce's.

now owned by Nestle, launched Polo Sugar Free. Which joined I'olo I'epiKTinint. Spearmint. Strung, ruits, and (iummics. So many mints, so little time.

it forgetting i'olo I a uk hi. Tangx Fruits. Fi. Fruits, and Spearmint Holes Do they really have a team of abandoned puppies working in 18-hour shifts to individually carve OUt those holes? Nonsense, sill). It takes the weight of two elephants to make the highly compressed ring of sugar anil glucose, vhich is sometimes used as currency in Bali, where one I'olo is worth about three-huiidredthsof a penny Tell that to the bank manager.

And in Japan, a plum and mint variant is popular, while in India the Polo Paan reproduces the flavour of the betel leaf, which is chewed like tobacco. I think I'll wait for the low-tar version. But what about the ethics of eating a Nesbe product? Well, there was the small inatlemf the Nestle baby milk scandal, hen it was alleged that third world babies were dying una result of multinational profiteering. Hut I'm sure that sail water under the bridge now. Not to be confused with: a small but nippy motor vehicle a Wagon Wheel, a garden herb, a Midget (iein.

PHOTOGRAPH NEIL LIB8ERT (1994) An role as the financial adviser and neighbour who insinuates hts way into the lives of Kevin Kline and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantoruo was a yet in David Fine her 's dark, dank, disgusting thriller. Albino AMgat or (1 996) Spacey's directorial debut was a dappotnt-ment a competent cnrnriate-on-the-run thneer but a brt anonymous overt monster for once as sadtebc Hollywood producer Buddy Acker man, lording it relentlessly over his assistant. Great fun to watch, and it looked like fun to do. masterpiece of slippery amoral rty. OJsngony Hhmi Hum (1982) David The Usual Suspects (1995) I (1997) Confident, Marriott fenxfeus salesmen saga produced the best wwombteact- tool 3 Spacey's weeeeRy cripple.

Verbal Kint, is another master of disguise and subterfuge. Ho was superb New Jersey, but grow up in Los Angeles. Ha was at Chautwortrt High School with Val Kilmer, did stand-up comedy In LA mostly impressions of actors and want to the Juard drama school in New York He lives in a Greenwich Village apartment with his labrador. That's about it. Long Day's Journey Into Night (1 986) Eugene O'Neill's most famous other classic American play of family feuding brought stage stardom on Broadway and in London so The Iceman Cometh brings him full circle.

Consenting Adults (1 992) The first important film rote (he had a small part in Working Girl). Pakula's film was nothing special, but Spacey's Lemmon and Alec Batdwn Typi in the interrogation relaxed performance in Curtis Hanson's remarkable film from James Eltroys tangled novel about sex, drugs, racism and murder In old Los Angeles. Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil (1998) An antiques dealer accused of murder (pictured left) in Clint Eastwood's impressive courtroom-based film reviewed on page 7. 141 cally, Speoay the most ctetachedmernbsrofthe team, but also its leader. Lost In Vbnkors (1993) Spacey won a Tony award for Neil Simon's play and a writer's plaudit.

"Kevin is a writer's dream," said Simon. scenes and won he first Oscar. Spacey took Ins mother to the ceremony and said: "Here's the i pudding, holding up his statuette. oven (1995) His most reprehensible scumbag Are you I httpypassnotes.guardian.co.uk.