The five-time Tony Award winning playwright and director George C. Wolfe shares the story behind his sizzling new production of Eugene O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh," in which Academy Award winner Denzel Washington plays Hickey, the mysterious traveling salesman who drives a barroom full of drunks in 1912 New York into a dizzying downward spiral.

On "Salon Talks," Wolfe describes to Salon's executive editor Andrew O'Hehir how the American classic still retains modern-day relevance, especially in how the characters wrestle with their own pasts and dreams. "Frighteningly or brutally, we go on a journey and we end up back at the same place. We're evolved, we're clear, we're there. No we're not! We've broken through, everything's better. No it's not! That's a character of the American psyche," Wolfe said. "We very frequently rewrite history as the characters do at the end of the play. We rewrite history so we don't have to take any responsibility for events that happen."