This is great theater and great TV, but it is frustrating to see mere prestige overwhelm a lot of good stuff. The same year that this play was shown, another great TV event took place, now viewable only at the Museum of Television and Radio: "The Ballad of Huck Finn", produced by the unforgettable, but sadly forgotten Robert Herridge. What poetry! What acting! What soul! Then there is that scoffed at, forgotten show MAMA (1948-1957) which is far better theater and far better TV than O'Neill's over-wrought though fascinating neurosis. There is only so much gut-wrenching pathos one can take, and it must be supplemented with more down to earth stuff. All classic TV theater should be on DVD, regardless of the quality of the original tape. Indeed, the worse the quality of the original tape, the more vital it is to rescue it on DVD. There is an obsession with color TV that's hard to understand. I always preferred black and white. I still have a black and white TV set (with a VCR and DVD of course).
Review of The Iceman Cometh
