Tickets for Hughie have been on pre-sale since Nov. 10, but go on sale to the general public Nov. 15 online at HughieBroadway.com, or by phone at (212) 239-6200.
Whitaker, who starred in such critically acclaimed films as "The Butler" and "The Last King of Scotland," will play Erie. He'll be joined by Frank Wood (Side Man, Angels in America, Clybourne Park) as A Night Clerk. Wood won the 1999 Tony Award as Best Featured Actor in a Play for his work in Side Man.
Helmed by Tony winner Michael Grandage, the two-hander Hughie has booked Broadway's Booth Theatre, current home of Hand to God, which closes in January 2016. Hughie will begin previews Feb. 5, 2016, and open Feb. 25. It's being billed as a "strictly limited engagement," but no final date has been announced.
Grandage, who has also directed Evita, Frost/Nixon and 2014's The Cripple of Inishmaan on Broadway, reunites his entire creative team from the 2010 Broadway production of Red. This includes Tony-winning set and costume designer Christopher Oram, Tony-winning lighting designer Neil Austin and Tony-winning sound designer Adam Cork.
Hughie premiered on Broadway in 1964 (with Jason Robards Jr.) and was last revived in 1996 (with Al Pacino). It is four-time Pulitzer Prize winner O’Neill's play about drunken, small-time hustler Erie Smith, who is mourning the death of a small Manhattan hotel’s night clerk, Hughie, with his successor. Whitaker will play the role of Erie, which has also been performed by such acclaimed actors as Burgess Meredith and Ben Gazzara. O'Neill is the only American playwright to win the Nobel Prize for literature.
Multi-award winner Whitaker has appeared in more than 50 films and worked with some of cinema’s most respected directors, including Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, Spike Jonze and many more. He will next appear on the big screen in the anticipated “Star Wars: Rogue One.”
Though Whitaker is known primarily as a film actor, he studied opera at the University of Southern California in the early 1980s and was later accepted into the school's Drama Conservatory.
Hughie is produced by Darren Bagert, Michael Grandage Company, Adam Zotovich, Joan Raffe & Jhett Tolentino, Arielle Tepper Madover, Martin McCallum, Debbie Bisno, CJ E&M, Jeffrey Finn, Hagemann Rosenthal Associates, Stacey Mindich, Seaview Productions, Taylor Weinstein Theatricals, Michael Watt and The Shubert Organization. 101 Productions, Ltd. serves as Executive Producer.
