Icebound: A Play

The Jordan family gathers on their remote Maine farm for the reading of their matriarch's will, expecting the estate to pass to one of them. Instead, it goes to Jane Crosby, a distant cousin none have ever met. Jane inherits not just property but a fractured family hovering on the edge of collapse. Young Ben, the family's troubled son, fled after an accident left him wracked with guilt. As winter closes in and the outside world vanishes behind walls of snow, old resentments surface and threaten to shatter what little remains. The title does double work: the literal icebound landscape traps these people together, but it's the emotional freeze that truly binds them, people locked in their own coldness, unable to thaw toward each other or the stranger suddenly handed control of their lives. Davis won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for this drama, which captures the claustrophobia of family obligation and the way money exposes every hidden fracture. It endures as a snapshot of early American theater conventions, sometimes stiff, often effective, always period-specific.