On & Off Broadway

‘Hughie’

A Review by Elyse Trevers

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The title character in Eugene O’Neill’s one-act play, Hughie, never appears in the drama. In fact, he’s dead. But his presence pervades the entire one hour at the Booth Theatre. Erie Smith, finely portrayed by Forrest Whitaker, is a gambler and horseplayer whose residence is the run-down NYC hotel where Hughie was the night clerk.

Though Erie describes Hughie as a sucker because he never checks Erie’s dice, he obviously meant a great deal to him. Hughie’s illness and subsequent death led Erie to go off on a drunk. In fact, he feels he hasn’t had any luck at all since Hughie took ill.

The play starts slowly, as Whitaker warms up with a lot of arm motions. He meets the new night clerk and begins telling stories about himself and his interactions with other gamblers and girls, especially how Hughie seemed impressed by the stories. But the new night clerk doesn’t seem interested.

Erie is reluctant to go upstairs to his room and intermittently checks the street as if someone is after him. His loneliness and desperation really resonate when he takes out a half-smoked cigar from his pocket, carefully unwrapping it from a napkin as if it’s a treasure. When his lighter doesn’t work, it’s one more sign of his bad luck. He is a very lonely man and ironically, Hughie, the night clerk, seemed to be his only friend. He expresses it differently when he notes, “when I lost Hughie, I lost my luck.” Whitaker withdraws into himself, making himself appear smaller. He quietly becomes teary and wins the audience’s sympathy.

Frank Wood, the new night clerk, is on stage for the half hour prior to the start of the show, and the entire time he is almost motionless, staring off into space. In fact, at times, one could even question whether he was conscious or even alive. Through the majority of the play itself, he holds a similar pose-rarely making eye contact with Erie as the gambler tells his tales. When Erie first sees him and learns his last name is Hughes, I wondered if perhaps the new night clerk was actually the spirit of Hughie, but no such mysticism permeates the story.

In the end, Erie’s circumstances haven’t changed. Although he had been deflated, he is recharged by the sudden interest of the new night clerk. The stage lights are brighter as Erie tosses the dice with the new night clerk (who doesn’t check the dice either.) Hughie is gone but Erie can go on; maybe his luck has just changed.