Hughie
by Eugene O'neill

Early one morning in the lobby of a seedy hotel in New York City in the 1920s, the hotel’s gray, withdrawn night clerk and “Erie” Smith, a penny-ante gambler who has spent most of his last 15 years at the hotel between periods of drunkenness, exchange words.

Erie’s most recent bender is prompted by the death of the title character, who was the night clerk’s predecessor.

Erie babbles through tales of his life’s imaginary successes, as well as his panicky optimism towards the futile future.

The night clerk can only listen to this study in fraudulent glibness which is touching, revealing, and a telling measure of what is behind this man’s delusions.

Hughie is one of four-time Pulitzer Prize winner and Nobel Prize Laureate Eugene O’Neill’s last works.

Originally intended as part of a series of short plays, it became the lone survivor when O’Neill destroyed the others and did not receive its American premiere until 20 years after its composition and ten years after the author’s death.