Broadway Theater Review: Hughie

Frank Wood, Forest Whitaker Wide Shot - Photo: Marc Brenne

Sometimes a Hollywood Star Isn’t Enough

to Guarantee Broadway Success

By Lauren Yarger
Broadway shows seem to think casting a Hollywood film star is the only sure way to success these days, but with the revival of Eugene ONeill’s difficult Hughie, Forest Whitaker has proved them wrong.

Whitaker, who won an Academy Award for his turn as dictator Idi Amin in “The Last King of Scotland” and who has a long string of successful films, found that acting on a stage is quite different. He doesn’t seem comfortable in the role of Erie Smith, a down-on-his-luck gambler who pays a visit to one of his favorite late-night haunts, a run-down hotel in New York.

Christopher Oram effectively creates the brooding lobby in dark, faded,  copper-dulled hues that are symbolic of the characters’ existences. He also designs costumes to invoke the 1928 setting.

For most of the 65-minute play, Whitaker sounds like he is reading from the script. This is pretty lethal for a work that is mostly long monologues broken only by an occasional contribution from the other actor on stage (in this case a solid Broadway vet Frank Wood who plays the hotel’s night clerk Charlie Hughes) or some inserted pauses with music. It’s all Whitaker, but Director Michael Grandage never gets him beyond one superficial level in a role that demands layers of depth and nuance.

Now to be fair, the play isn’t one of O’Neill’s greatest. The one-act is one big monologue by Erie, who talks to the new Night Clerk about his predecessor named, Hughie, who recently died. It seems the two spent a lot of time together, with Erie staking Hughie to some friendly gambling between the two. Erie seems lost without Hughie’s companionship, but his angst may be more about the fact that his own luck has run out since Hughie first went to the hospital, Erie also may be reluctant to have to face the insignificance of his own life.

While Erie describes their relationship as a friendship – Hughie was “one grand little guy,” he tells the new clerk – he confuses the issue by referring to him as “a sucker night after night.” We get the impression he didn’t really like the guy – he sure didn’t get along with Hughie’s wife. It might be that Erie just enjoyed feeling empowered by being able to use and bully Hughie.

Though the clerk tells us he is not related to Hughie, despite the “Hughes” last name, before the night is over we begin to see that he might be more connected to him than he knows, at least with respect to filling the void in Erie’s life.

Despite having only a few lines throughout the play, Wood gets most of the evening’s laughs. Whitaker’s inability to give his character some shape causes the production to fall flat, which must be a disappointment to fans willing to pay $150 a ticket for just over an hour’s entertainment (Box Office sales reportedly have been slow).

Grandage reunites the creative team from his Tony-Award-winning production Red and his recent West End hit Photograph 51 starring Nicole Kidman, but fails to make it three times the charm here (Neil Austin designs the lighting and Adam Cork designs sound and composes music which helps drift some spacing into the monologues.)  The play, originally scheduled for a Broadway run though mid June, will close early on March 27.

Hughie runs at the Booth Theatre, 222 West 45 St., NYC, through March 27. Perofromances are Tuesdays: 7:30 pm; Wednesdays 2 and 7:30 pm; Thursdays 7:30 pm; Fridays 8 pm; Saturdays 2 and 8 pm; Sundays 3 pm. Tickets $55-$149: hughiebroadway.com 

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