(Chris Jones’s article appeared in the Chicago Tribune, 5/2.)
They don't talk the language of chemical addiction in Harry Hope's New York saloon — once a first-class hangout for sports, now a brutal "Bottom of the Sea Rathskeller" where the denizens have fallen as far as anyone can fall in this world, save for that one final tumble. In Eugene O'Neill's day, boozing to mind-numbing excess was seen as a character flaw, a weakness, a psychological consequence, a pastime of men who've left the field for the grandstand and find themselves damned either way.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/theater/theaterloop/