culture
Hughie is Brief, but Intense
Eugene O'Neill's rarely produced one-act Hughie is a bite-size piece of a longer, darker story
Michael Kash as Erie Smith. Photo courtesy of Alley Theatre Workshop.
Hughie
The Theatre Centre
(1087 Queen Street West)
February 8 to March 3, Tuesday to Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m.
Adults $25, Students/Seniors $20
New York in the 1920s is possibly one of the most romantic, most mythological combinations of time and place possible. The style, the attitude, the music, the accents—it all seems more and more charming the further we get away from it.
But the latest production from Alley Theatre Workshop (ATW), Hughie, by the American dramatist (“tragedian” would be more appropriate) Eugene O’Neill, is a sober reminder that the era was far from perfect.
Down-and-out gambler and alcoholic Erie Smith (Michael Kash, ATW’s artistic director) returns to a grimy hotel, his “home,” in the early morning hours after a five-day bender triggered by the funeral of the hotel’s former night clerk, the titular Hughie. In what amounts to a 45-minute monologue, he praises, laments, and mourns Hughie’s passing to the replacement night clerk, Charlie Hughes (L. Dean Ifill). The play is rarely produced (though stars like Al Pacino, Jason Robards, Brian Dennehy, and the late Ben Gazzara have played Erie in the past) and it has never, before now, stood on its own.
And that’s probably because it’s a daunting script. The actor playing Smith needs one-man-show charisma, and whoever plays Hughes has to create the impression of a well-rounded character using only a few quips. In the ATW production, director David Ferry compensates for Hughes’ relative silence by projecting his thoughts as silent-film intertitles above his perch behind the hotel’s front desk, where he contemplates, among other things, the rising of the sun, the passing of trucks and police cars, his adoration of a famous gambler, and dreams of a more exciting life.
Kash relishes O’Neill’s finely crafted script. Smith is a character many men would love to play—crass and loud, but complex and incredibly vulnerable. As O’Neill slowly reveals the true nature of Smith’s friendship with Hughie, we see how both of them relied on Smith’s exaggerated tales of victory and debauchery for an escape from their daily realities. We also see the parallels between gambling and life—up one day and down the next, here one day and gone the next. Kash meets the text with the stamina it requires.
But the way Hughes is characterized slows the production down. The pauses to accommodate his thoughts disrupt Smith’s rapid-fire speech. They leave Ifill staring off into space for awkward lengths of time (especially awkward given the script’s super-naturalistic style). Ferry might have chosen to have the audience guess at Hughes’ thoughts as a way of keeping us engaged; instead, we’re spoon-fed his inner monologue and his story.
Looking on the bright side, Joe Madziak’s set fits The Theatre Centre perfectly, providing a worthy platform for the play. And an opening musical number by Mike Sereny and Alexis Baro helps evoke the 1920s swagger that we love oh so much. If only the rest of Hughie could have been equally captivating.