Two Roads Productions Will Perform Eugene O'Neill's HUGHIE

Two Roads Productions will present “HUGHIE” by esteemed playwright Eugene O’Neill.  His one-act play is considered one of American theater’s most oddly powerful theatrical inventions.  Directed by Bill Sehres and starring Dan Frischman, the show will open at Two Roads Theatre, running March 29th — April 20th, 2025  (Preview: March 28th).

HUGHIE (1942) is a play by Eugene O'Neill, set in a hotel lobby in New York City during the summer of 1928. Small-time gambler Erie Smith returns from a four-day drunk, and he boasts of his betting wins and carnal scores to the new night clerk. Slowly, however, his slick veneer thins, revealing a man broken over the death of his only friend — the hotel's previous night clerk.

Nobel laureate Eugene O'Neill took a break from writing, a break from writing his classic play, Long Day's Journey Into Night, to pen this lighter one-act play, which he didn't live to see produced. It was first performed on Broadway in 1964, with Jason Robards as Erie. It has played on Broadway three more times, the last being in 2016.   

Hughie, takes place in a seedy New York hotel lobby at 3:00am on a hot night in the summer of 1928. Erie Smith, a small-time gambler, down on his luck and at the end of his rope, shows up after a four-day bender, brought on by the death of “Hughie,” a night clerk at the hotel and always a willing listener to Erie’s yarns of his life’s imaginary successes.  But Hughie is gone now, and Erie has only his dull, disinterested replacement to listen to him as he tries to boast and lie his way through his grief, loneliness, and despair. Only now, with Hughie dead, does he realize the desolate emptiness of his life. in this powerful, haunting piece, as in The Iceman Cometh, O’Neill draws a heartbreaking portrait of longing and loss, of the loneliness of the human condition, and the desperate hunger to overcome it. 

THE TEAM

Presented by Two Roads Theatre Productions

Directed by Bill Sehres

Produced by Heidi Appe and Allen Levin

Set Design by Katherine Bulovic

Casting by Angela Sanders

Graphics by David Garfield

Publicity by Sandra Kuker PR

CAST

Dan Frischman – Erie Smith

Andy Forrest* - Charlie Hughes

Scott MacDonell* - Charlie Hughes