Hughie

50/100

Photo by Marc Brenner
Written by Eugene O'Neill. Directed by Michael Grandage. At the Golden Theatre through June 12

What's it About?: Summer, 1928. New York City. Beyond the bright lights of the Great White Way, a small-time gambler and big-time drinker returns to the faded hotel he has made his home. He encounters a new night clerk at the front desk and as the early hours of the morning give way to another dawn, he continues to chase the American Dream in order to survive. HUGHIE is a rarely seen one-act theatrical masterpiece that beautifully offers a unique insight into the human condition.

Consensus: The only thing critics can agree on is Frank Wood, who they unanimously praise for his committed non-performance. Clocking in under an hour, many also have agreed that the play is decidedly not O'Neill's best work. Where they differ is on the merits of Forrest Whitaker, making his broadway debut. Some call him brilliantly introspective while others go so far as to call him "catatonic". Nonetheless, almost every critic agrees that a 55 minute monologue is not particularly worth Broadway prices.



The New York Times 87/100
(Ben Brantley) "But while you may feel this show is only a trifle at first — an hors d’oeuvre of a play next to the multicourse meals of “Journey” and “Iceman” — it keeps growing larger in your mind, the way a quietly told ghost story might. And you’ll be unlikely to forget the image of Mr. Whitaker poised with anxiety and resignation on the staircase to his room, terrified of saying good night to the imaginary life he has created below."

Newsday 80/100
(Linda Winer) And what a quietly satisfying, touching pleasure this production, staged by Tony-winning director Michael Grandage, turns out to be. “Hughie” is a late O’Neill work, written as the first of eight projected one-act plays during his precious last years in the ’40s. Whitaker...brings a buoyant, sweet, almost delicate sensibility to the breakable soul in the baggy suit and bow tie who has grandiose self-delusions.

Associated Press 80/100
(Mark Kennedy) "By the time the clock hits 4 a.m. and the sun peeks out, there's something deeply satisfying about this little play, which O'Neill himself may never have expected anyone to actually mount on a stage. Thank goodness it has been, especially with Whitaker in the lead role."

The Washington Post 80/100
(Peter Marks) "And yet Erie can’t help but reveal the truth of his situation, the losses and rejections he’s racked up. All of this registers in the countenance of a terrific American actor, who’s found a comfortable home on the stage of the Booth, when the man he plays never truly can."

USA Today 75/100
(Elysa Gardner) "Whitaker makes his character worthy of compassion. Erie can, without question, come across as a lout, particularly when the subject turns to women, who have obviously proven as elusive as money. But Whitaker brings an awkward sweetness that makes his desperation not only pitiable but accessible."

The Wrap 75/100
(Robert Hofler) "'Whimsical' is not a word one uses very much to describe an O’Neill character. Whitaker delivers a most endearing Erie, right down to the nervous giggle he adds to punctuate the character’s otherwise bottomless despair. It’s a sign he’s still living."

The Hollywood Reporter 70/100
(David Rooney) "The play's emotional charge remains subdued, but there's lingering melancholy in Erie's painstaking efforts to forget that his gorgeous Follies girls are cheap tramps, his massive paydays are minor flukes and the high life he's living is more often an intoxicated stupor on the pathetic fringes of the big-money rackets. Without Hughie or a willing replacement, he'd be forced to acknowledge that his life is one of emptiness and solitude."

am New York 63/100
(Matt Windman) "Put it this way: by the time that “Hughie” is over, “Fiddler on the Roof” is barely halfway through Act One."

The Telegraph 60/100
"The night I saw it, as Whitaker spoke those words, there was that sense of every consciousness in the auditorium merging into one rapt and receptive cell. It was a moment of magic, of palpable pure attention. That kind of spellbound state cannot, of course, be forced, so it’s curious that Grandage would have chosen to intersperse the play with several heavy-handed interludes in which the lights intensify, the spooky music swells and the clerk’s stare becomes even more eerily vacant."

Time Out New York 60/100
(David Cote) "In movies such as Bird and The Last King of Scotland, the actor has achieved a complex interweave of pride and self-doubt (even self-loathing), but in O’Neill’s piece, such bitter despair needs to surface over the swagger and rhetorical flash. Hughie is only an hour long, but as we wait for Whitaker to gain confidence in his character, the night grows long and weary."

Variety 50/100
(Marilyn Stasio) "Michael Grandage, for lauded his stagings of “Red” and “The Cripple of Inishmaan,” has directed him with considerable sensitivity as Erie, the forlorn gambler in Eugene O’Neill’s “Hughie.” Erie feels abandoned after the death of the hotel clerk who was his only friend and lucky mascot. But Whitaker’s warmth can also be a hindrance, as it is when the star, making his Broadway debut here, must also convince us that in better days he was a confident and happy-go-lucky sporting man."

Talkin' Broadway 50/100
(Matthew Murray) "Although Whitaker is not there yet, he may still make it. The energy, resourcefulness, and raw ability he shows here suggest it's a distinct possibility, and result in a Hughie that manages to enjoy even as it fails to invigorate. But right now, like Erie, Whitaker is potential and fantasies unrealized, underutilized, and underwhelming."

nj.com 40/100
(Christopher Kelly) "Yet for any of this to work, "Hughie" requires a lead actor who can bring to Erie's mythmaking and self-aggrandizement to life; someone who can show us a man who is both pitiful yet also poignantly noble. That actor is not Whitaker, whose awkwardly staccato delivery and occasional long pauses make you wonder if he's successfully memorized his lines. The Oscar-winning performer hasn't appeared onstage in decades, and the lack of experience shows. Whitaker doesn't even begin to illuminate Erie or make it clear to the audience why we should care about him."

The Stage 40/100
(Mark Shenton) "And that's it, that’s the sole action of the play. Whitaker is out of his depth and has a very hesitant stage range. He’s incapable of drawing the audience into a production that while very handsomely dressed up has nowhere to go. This is the Michael Grandage Company’s first project direct on Broadway and he, along with the invaluable assistance of composer Adam Cork and lighting designer Neil Austin, invests it with lots of atmosphere, but it feels like very hard work for all concerned, including the audience."

TheaterMania 40/100
(David Gordon) "In the end, however, the main concern is Whitaker's work. If only he could get the first half of his performance up to the level of the second, this Hughie would be a safe bet.

NorthJersey.com 37/100
(Robert Feldberg) "Whitaker, under the direction of Michael Grandage, gives us the character’s surface. His Erie is a pleasant-enough guy with a genial laugh, but there isn’t a vital arc to his story. The actor is a warm presence, but not much more."

NBC New York 35/100
(Robert Kahn) "Erie recalls a time he was invited to Hughie’s house for dinner, then laments that another invitation never came. There must be a deep unhappiness and loneliness within him; we just aren’t seeing it. Whitaker delivers his dialogue in an oddly staccato style. Maybe he’s still trying to find his footing with O’Neill’s rhythms."

New York Post 30/100
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) "It’s an interesting thought to ponder, which you’ll have time to do as you daydream during Whitaker’s monotone monologues. Better luck next time"

Huffington Post 30/100
(Steven Suskin) "Robards, who returned to Erie again and again over his career, was able to weave enough of a spell to make Hughie interesting enough to get by, but that in itself is not exactly a recommendation. Whitaker appears to have the thing properly memorized, and has developed something of the swagger of a washed-up small-time gambler. His rendition of Erie Smith, however, never begins to come alive."

Deadline 25/100
(Jeremy Gerard) "This approach might leave its own kind of chill if it were accompanied by a transparently false cockiness. But that’s not in evidence here, not within the  imposing set and Neil Austin’s entombing lighting, all gorgeous. The result is a failure to lift this small work into the tragic realm to which it aspires. It remains stubbornly small. That’s surely as much O’Neill’s fault as Whitaker’s. But it’s Whitaker we’ve come to see."

New York Daily News 20/100
(Joe Dziemianowicz) "This 'Hughie' is hooey. It’s not that Forest Whitaker’s acting is bad in this high-profile revival. It’s that this likable [sic] Oscar winner is not doing any discernible acting to speak of."

Vulture 15/100
(Jesse Green) "Whitaker is so interiorized he seems catatonic, with peculiar diction, a strange accent... and a way of chopping up sentences that suggests he has only a tentative grip on the lines. He moves well, which is to say idiosyncratically, with a rolling gait and a charadeslike intensity of hand movement that might well make the characterization visible if it weren’t so inaudible. Even so, you spend a lot of the time looking at Wood, a theatrical creature through and through, doing much more with much less."

The Wall Street Journal 10/100
(Terry Teachout) "Talented though he is, Mr. Whitaker is a film actor through and through, a pure naturalist accustomed to being seen by the camera rather than presenting himself to a live audience, and his bright, bouncy performance is as devoid of depth as his piping tenor voice. You half expect him to break into a chorus of “Luck Be a Lady” when he makes his first entrance."