Dennehy commands the stage in Eugene O’Neill’s "Hughie" at Long Wharf

NEW HAVEN - Practice certainly makes perfect in Chicago’s Goodman Theatre production of Eugene O’Neill’s tight, taut one-act play, "Hughie," starring the inimitable Brian Dennehy and Joe Grifasi at Long Wharf Theatre.

This is the fourth time Dennehy and Grifasi have teamed up in this play and their familiarity with their parts and with each other make this a rich and rewarding experience.

Set in 1928 in the wee hours of the morning, Dennehy plays a two-bit grifter named Erie Smith who lives in a seedy New York City hotel, whose tawdry lobby was designed by Eugene Lee.

The stage in Stage II at Long Wharf is an awkward size and shape - long and narrow, and Lee utilizes it exquisitely to create an authentic, detailed lobby, subtly mirroring Erie’s psychological mindset of better days gone by.

Erie enters after a drinking binge, because Hughie, the night clerk, and his captive listener and probably only friend, has just died. Erie is a full-time gambler, mostly betting on horses, with apparently no family and even fewer friends. He tells the new night watchman, played by Joe Grifasi, that he hasn’t won a race since Hughie died, and his confidence has gone along with his former friend.

Erie is a man who can only exist in the presence of another, and is deeply lonely and occasionally admits it. The many "dames" he brags about seem to be all blond and all paid for.

O’Neill has never been known for his optimistic repartee, and he is true to form here in a play that was written near the end of his life and was somehow spared from being destroyed along with numerous other unpublished works that O’Neill incinerated.

At 70, Dennehy, a Bridgeport Conn. native, is a bit old for the part of the 59-year-old Erie, but that actually works to his advantage, making the character initially appear distinctly frail and even more sad and pitiful.

As the play continues though, Hughie is propelled by his own momentum - displaying a con man’s perpetual toothsome smile, mirthless laugh, and non-stop blather.
Through this thin façade chinks of honest self-reflection appear, such as when Erie laments to the night watchman that Hughie gave him confidence, and says, half-defensively: "What I fed Hughie weren’t all lies, they were stories."

It seems a positive play because Erie finds in this night clerk a replacement for his need for an audience to authenticate himself, to make himself feel better temporarily, but he misses the opportunity for real change and locks himself further into his uncomfortable but familiar self-delusions.

Meanwhile, the night clerk is Erie’s audience - listening. Probably one of the most difficult things to sustain unselfconsciously for an actor is to just listen, and Grifasi is great at it, with his vacant, dreamy lifetime night clerk stare, interspersed with real interest in the gambling lifestyle.

O’Neill, who spent many summers in New London, struggled with alcoholism and depression all his adult life. He is the only American playwright to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, but his perspective is as deeply dark and troubled as it is fascinating, with plays such as "A Long Days Journey into Night," "The Iceman Cometh," "Desire Under the Elms," and "Mourning Becomes Electra."

If you have never seen an O’Neill play, "Hughie" is a great one to test drive, and if you have, it is a priceless opportunity to see two consummate actors at work in a concise and complex play by an American icon.

HUGHIE

3½ Stars
Location: 222 Sargent Drive, New Haven
Production: Written by Eugene O’Neill. Directed by Robert Falls. Set design by Eugene Lee. Costume design by Rachel Anne Healy. Lighting design by John Culbert. Sound design by Richard Woodbury.
Running time: 50 minutes with no intermission.
Show Times: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and selected Sundays at 7 p.m., Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8 p.m., with Sunday selected Wednesday matinees at 2 p.m. and Saturday matinees at 3 p.m. extended through November 16.
Tickets: $22 to $62. For more information call their box office at 203-787-4282, or visit their website at www.longwharf.org.

ACTOR...CHARACTER
Brain Dennehy ... Erie Smith
Joe Grifasi ... Night Clerk