Hughie with Forest Whitaker

Tickets have gone on sale for the highly awaited Broadway debuts for the 2016 Season Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker in Eugene O’Neill’s Hughie. Previews begin February 5 2016 at the Booth Theatre Broadway.

Forest Whitaker

Forest Steven Whitaker III (b 1961) is an American actor, director, and producer.

He has earned a reputation for intensive character study work for films such as Lee Daniels’ The Butler, Bird, and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, for his work in direct-to-video films and for his recurring role as LAPD Internal Affairs Lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh on the Emmy Award-winning television series The Shield.

Whitaker won the Academy Award, British Academy Film Award, Golden Globe Award, National Board of Review Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, and various critics groups awards for his performance as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the 2006 film The Last King of Scotland.

Forest had his first lead movie role starring as musician Charlie “Bird” Parker in the Clint Eastwood-directed film, Bird. To prepare himself for the part, he sequestered himself in a loft with only a bed, couch, and saxophone, having also conducted extensive research and taken alto sax lessons. His performance, which has been called “transcendent,” earned him the Best Actor award at the 1988 Cannes Film Festivaland a Golden Globe nomination. Whitaker continued to work with a number of well-known directors throughout the 1990s. He starred in the 1990 film Downtown with Anthony Edwards and Penelope Ann Miller. Neil Jordan cast him in the pivotal role of “Jody”, a captive British soldier in his 1992 film, The Crying Game where Whitaker used an English accent. Todd McCarthy, of Variety, described Whitaker’s performance as “big-hearted,” “hugely emotional,” and “simply terrific.” In 1994, he was a member of the cast that won the first ever National Board of Review Award for Best Acting by an Ensemble for Robert Altman’s film, PrÃªt-Ã -Porter.

Whitaker’s 2006 portrayal of Idi Amin in the film, The Last King of Scotland earned him positive reviews by critics as well as multiple awards and honour’s.To portray the dictator, Whitaker gained 50 pounds, learned to play the accordion, and immersed himself in research.He read books about Amin, watched news and documentary footage featuring Amin, and spent time in Uganda meeting with Amin’s friends, relatives, generals, and victims; he also learned Swahili and mastered Amin’s East African accent. His performance earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor and for that same role, he was also recognized with the British Academy Film Award, Golden Globe Award, National Board of Review Award, Screen Actors Guild Award.Â Accolades from the Broadcast Film Critics Association, London Film Criticsâ€™ Circle Award, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, National Society of Film Critics, and New York Film Critics Circle among others.

Hughie

Hughie is a short two-character play by Eugene Oâ€™Neill set in the lobby of a small hotel on a West Side street in midtown New York during the summer of 1928. The play is essentially a long monologue delivered by a small time hustler named Erie Smith to the hotelâ€™s new night clerk Charlie Hughes, lamenting how Smithâ€™s luck has gone bad since the death of Hughie, Hughes’ predecessor. Oâ€™Neill wrote Hughie in 1942, although it did not receive its world premiere until 1958, when it was staged in Sweden at the Royal Dramatic Theatre with Bengt Eklund as Erie Smith. It was first staged in English at the Theater Royal in Bath, England in 1963 with Burgess Meredith as Erie.

Eugene O’Neill

Eugene Gladstone O’Neill (October 16, 1888 â€“ November 27, 1953) was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg. The drama Long Day’s Journey Into Night is often numbered on the short list of being among the finest American plays in the 20th century, alongside Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.

O’Neill’s plays were among the first to include speeches in American vernacular and involve characters on the fringes of society. They struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations, but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. Of his very few comedies, only one is well-known (Ah, Wilderness!). Nearly all of his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism.

O’Neill’s first published play, Beyond the Horizon, opened on Broadway in 1920 to great acclaim, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His first major hit was The Emperor Jones, which ran on Broadway in 1920 and obliquely commented on the U.S. occupation of Haiti that was a topic of debate in that year’s presidential election. His best-known plays include Anna Christie (Pulitzer Prize 1922), Desire Under the Elms (1924), Strange Interlude (Pulitzer Prize 1928), Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), and his only well-known comedy, Ah, Wilderness!, a wistful re-imagining of his youth as he wished it had been. In 1936 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. After a ten-year pause, O’Neill’s now-renowned play The Iceman Cometh was produced in 1946. The following year’s A Moon for the Misbegotten failed, and it was decades before coming to be considered as among his best works.

More Eugene O’Neill at TheatreGold DataBase Here

Cast

Forest Whitaker – Erie Smith

Frank Wood – A Night Hotel Clerk

Creative

Written by Eugene O’Neill

Directed by Michael Grandage

Scenic & Costume Design by Christopher Oram

Lighting Design by Neil Austin

Sound Design by Adam Cork

Produced by

Darren Bagert,Â Michael Grandage Company,Â Adam Zotovich,Â Joan Raffe & Jhett Tolentino,Â Arielle Tepper Madover,Martin McCallum,Â Debbie Bisno,Â CJ E&M,Â Jeffrey Finn,Â Hagemann Rosenthal Associates,Â Stacey Mindich,Â Seaview Productions,Taylor Weinstein Theatricals,Â Michael WattÂ andÂ The Shubert Organization (Philip J. Smith: Chairman; Robert E. Wankel: President)