Nathan Lane

Nathan Lane is making laugh people in a practice room here, ribbing a member actor regarding their guttural release of one of simpler shouts of Eugene O’Neill. They are not hearing ‘Ha!,' ” he explains, “so much as they are hearing” and here he does the overstated simulation of blurted moan of Brian Dennehy. “Same as the starting of old Chevy,” suggests by Mr. Lane, to normal merriment. Mr. Dennehy shoots and shrugs back, “they are more of the Ford man.”

At the time the practice gets began again with Mr. Dennehy providing a pointedly brittle “Ha!” — The vociferous Mr. Lane is hard pushed to get also a snigger from the throng that contains 17 actors, Robert Falls, the director and a small collection of observers.

Later than all, this is “The Iceman Cometh,” in the highly praised production of 2012 Goodman Theater, being reassembled at its home base for the run at the Music’s Brooklyn Academy from 5th Feb. to March 15. As well as Mr. Lane is performing Hickey, the salesman traveling with a goods bill, generally speaking, the truth regarding the uselessness of all human determined — that nobody in last-chance saloon of the play is eager to purchase.

This “Iceman,” also, available audiences with the sight of one of their outstanding comic actors performing a character regarding whom it is supposed, “He would make a cat chuckle!” but who is hardly capable, for the four-hour-plus running time of play, to lift up the smile from their hard-drinking friends. This turnaround of expectations, a type of dramatic head fake, is at the spirit of the production of Mr. Falls, though he is pleased to credit some others with the thought.