Hughie (review)

 

Spoilers Ahoy! 

Eugene O'Neill as a playwright specialized in stories wherein the characters come face to face with the disturbing truth of who they are.  Such plays demand much of the cast, and perhaps most so in this, a two handed one act (i.e. a play with two characters running in this case approximately one hour). 

Most surprisingly--to me, not knowing much about the story before showing up--the central character we meet is not in fact Hughie at all.  

Instead we meet Erie Smith (Troy Dunn) a hustler whose best days--which were never great--seem behind him, living in a seedy hotel in 1928 New York.  He returns to the hotel after a bender to find a new night clerk named Charles Hughes (Gifford Irvine or David E. Frank depending on the date).  He is not the title character either, but rather shares by odd coincidence the same name as the previous night clerk, the one who'd been here at least as long as Erie himself.  Years and years and years.  His recent funeral had sent Erie on said bender.  Now, he returns to the nearest thing he has to a home, still missing his friend (though he won't admit any such thing) Hughie.

So he talks, not completely sober, very worried about events, and more troubled by a thousand other things which flow out his mouth like prophecy.  There is truth in wine, the saying goes, and Erie has had plenty of wine plus similar, stronger beverages.  He starts by trying to get to know the new guy, Hugh, and starts telling tales about himself plus the late, great Hughie.  The guy was a chump, a loser, patsy, certainly not a real friend.  But he goes on and on and on about this man.  About where he came from, how they met, what they talked about.

The new clerk barely listens, bored way beyond tears by a job he's done for far too long and just sometimes uttering some platitude.  Erie recognizes this, but continues.  He cannot stop.  He needs to say these words, and revealing in the process how protective he felt about Hughie, how this sucker actually had the power to disappoint, to hurt him.  

Erie falls deeper and deeper into the fact how lost he feels without Hughie.  He thinks of it as losing his luck.  Of course he hasn't lost any such thing.  Rather, he is without his only friend, his sole companion, the lone individual with whom he was not alone.

At least that is how it feels.  One wonders by the end how much of these stories are true, just how much he can refrain from hustling even himself?  Erie Smith is a liar and a con man, a boaster who dances between truth and delusion.  The direction of  Frédérique Michel of these fine actors brings all that to the surface, bubbling out like the stuff of an existential cauldron.  It feels tragic to watch, and hopeful, disorienting as well as sad.  In the end Dunn's Erie comes across as in some fundamental way...us.  You.  Them.  Me.  All of us.    

Hughie runs Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 4pm until Sunday, November 24, 2024 at the City Garage, Bergamot Station,  2525 Michigan Ave., Building T1 • Santa Monica, CA 90404.