O'Neill was alive when The Emperor Jones was staged. And a good thing too. What if the director had been on his own? Perhaps he would have read the descriptions of Jones' visions and decided that these “thoughts” couldn't be staged. This did not happen to The Emperor Jones, but it is exactly what happened to Hughie, which was published and produced posthumously. O'Neill was not there to oversee the staging and the result was two weird productions, one in Stockholm and the other on Broadway.

Hughie is very much like Jones in structure, a monologue counterpointed by the visions of the title character. With Jones, O'Neill made sure that the visions were presented in pantomime, like the flowing images of silent film.