Having played the imperious likes of Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland and the self-employed samurai Ghost Dog, Forest Whitaker is to play another grandstanding character in his Broadway debut: Erie Smith, the hustler in Eugene O’Neill’s play Hughie, which will open in spring 2016.
In the short 1942 play, Smith regales the night clerk of a fleapit hotel with memories of Hughie, the former clerk whose death has sent Smith on a drunken downward spiral. The part has previously been played by the likes of Al Pacino, Brian Dennehy and Richard Schiff.
The new production is to be directed by Michael Grandage, the former Donmar Warehouse director whose recent hits include The Cripple of Inishmaan and the Tony-winning Red, and whose production of Photograph 51, starring Nicole Kidman, is to open on the West End in early September.
Whitaker meanwhile, who in 2006 became one of only four African-Americans to win a best actor Oscar with his portrayal of Amin, is currently appearing in boxing drama Southpaw, and is filming Star Wars spin-off movie Rogue One.
