Oscar Winner Forest Whitaker Will Make Broadway Debut in Eugene O’Neill's Hughie, Directed by Michael Grandage

Oscar winner Forest Whitaker is set to make his Broadway debut in the Eugene O’Neill classic Hughie. Directed by Tony winner Michael Grandage (who is currently rehearsing Nicole Kidman for her stage return in the West End's Photograph 51), the revival will play a limited engagement in the spring of 2016 at a Shubert Theatre to be announced.

Whitaker won an Oscar for The Last King of Scotland and has appeared in over fifty films including Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Platoon, Bird, The Color of Money, Ready to Wear, Smoke, Good Morning Vietnam, The Crying Game, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, Panic Room, Where The Wild Things Are, The Great Debaters, The Butler and Southpaw. Upcoming movie projects include Star Wars: Rogue One. As a director, Whitaker’s work includes HBO’s Strapped, Waiting to Exhale, Hope Floats and First Daughter. He studied opera and drama in college.

Hughie is set in the lobby of a small midtown hotel on the West Side of Manhattan. Whitaker plays Erie Smith, a drunken, small time hustler who is mourning the recent death of the hotel’s night clerk, Hughie. Erie regales the new night clerk with tall-tales of his glory days and times spent with Hughie. The show premiered on Broadway in 1964 with Jason Robards in the role of “Erie” Smith; it was last seen on the Great White Way in 1996 in a production directed by and starring Al Pacino.

Each designer of Hughie received a Tony for their work on Grandage’s Tony-winning production of Red. Sets and costumes will be by Christopher Oram, with lights by Neil Austin and sound by Adam Cork.

Additional casting for the two-hander will be announced later.