“Mr. Icky” by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a play that
does not make much sense. There is a very lose plot that at times is hard to
follow. Mr. Icky is a hundred-year-old arsonist. We never see him set anything
on fire during the play, but he has an interaction with Peter where he admits
that in prison he became a bigger criminal. He also had a daughter, Ulsa, who
went to Lunnon (London) to be a typewriter. With the way this play was going I would
not have been surprised if she actually transformed into a typewriter. But she
did not because we see her later when her fiancé Divine follows her home after
they break up due to an argument about who would win in a fight. When they come
to a conclusion to the debate they decide to get married again. That is the
first child to leave Mr. Icky.
His
son Charles then comes out wearing a rope and anchor around his neck. He
decided to go out to sea, making him the second child to leave Mr. Icky. The script
then says dozen of Mr. Icky’s children come out. This 100-year-old man who was
in prison for years has several dozen kids. His children all decide to leave so
Mr. Icky is all alone. The curtains open and close a few times and Peter is
left standing there with a moth ball. Peter is having euphoric reactions to the
moth ball, so he gives it Mr. Icky as a present in the end.
Although
the plot makes no sense, the way it is written is very cool. Fitzgerald leaves
places for the people performing the show to add in jokes. Also his stage directions are very specific.
An example is when he describes Divine’s stride as “He advances toward her
with the graceful, even stride that made him captain of the striding team at
Cambridge.” Even though I do not
think a striding team is a thing, I understood what Fitzgerald was trying to
say. My favorite part about the way he wrote it was at the end he says could
end here or it can go on forever. There is no real structure. This is not a
play that has very strict rules or is realistic at all. In my opinion it was a
confusing, but fun read.
