Near the end of Eugene O’Neill’s career, the playwright planned a series of eight one acts titled “By Way of the Obit” in which the protagonist of each play would relate how someone else had died. “Hughie” is the lone survivor of that collection; the playwright destroyed the rest.

One of the first American playwrights to introduce realism to the American theater — and the only playwright to win four Pulitzer Prizes for Drama — O’Neill is considered by many to be our country’s foremost playwright for works like “The Iceman Cometh” and “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.”

Set in the lobby of a seedy hotel in Midtown Manhattan in 1928, “Hughie” concerns a small-time gambler named Erie Smith who’s returning home at 4 in the morning after going on a days-long bender. Speaking with the new Night Clerk — who has little interest in what Erie tells him — the protagonist slowly relates how he was friends with Hughie, the previous night clerk, and how Hughie’s recent death sent him on his drinking binge.

Written in 1942, “Hughie” didn’t have its world premiere until 1958; on Broadway, productions have starred talents like Jason Robards, Ben Gazzara, Al Pacino, Brian Dennehy and Forest Whitaker.

“It’s certainly a tour de force for an actor,” says Rusty Wilson, director of the staging taking up residence at The Basement this weekend under the banner Onomatopoeia Productions. “It’s a pretty quick ride, and it’s huge in scope.”

This workshop production’s genesis came out of adult acting classes Wilson teaches through Cadence Theatre Company. Otto Konrad, who stars as Erie in the show, recently returned to acting after working for decades as a lawyer. Konrad received his bachelor’s in theater from the University of Tennessee, but a serious back injury led him to pursue law as a career.

“It’s a play about a guy who has lost his best friend and is struggling to memorialize that individual and eulogize that individual, and he’s hoping to find someone else to be his friend. It’s a very human and simple story,” Konrad says. “Erie, when it’s all said and done, is a very appealing individual. He’s very real. He’s struggling with real issues.”

Will Dunlap, who plays the Night Clerk, connected with Wilson and Konrad through Cadence’s adult acting classes. Dunlap says that his character is a stand-in for the audience.

“He is the witness to the gambler, the monologues, the ramblings, but as witnesses go, he’s not particularly enthralled or perceptive, and it takes him a while to wake up to what the man is saying,” says Dunlap, who is also an upper school English teacher and department chair at Collegiate School. “It’s particularly dark in some respects, but kind of inspiring.”

The trio have been slowly workshopping the piece for eight months, which Wilson says is his “dream.”

“It has afforded all of us the time to explore, to try things out,” Wilson says. “We’re seeing the fruits of it in rehearsals now, and that wouldn’t have happened if we’d done it in a month.”

Dunlap says that anyone who’s experienced grief will commiserate with Erie.

“This is a character study of a particular kind of egotist who is deeply involved with himself and is working out the intricacies of what it means to be alone after someone you love has died,” he says.

Konrad lauds Dunlap for his work.

“The Night Clerk is a very hard part,” he says. “He doesn’t have a lot of lines, per se, but his presence on the stage is pretty big and there’s a subtle interplay between my character and him that has absolutely got to be nailed for it to work.”

More than some of O’Neill’s other work, Konrad believes “Hughie” has a note of optimism at its close.

“There’s something hopeful about the show,” he says. “It’s a simple little play that has a really positive, affirming ending.”

By staging it at The Basement with a full bar and jazz performances by the John Winn Trio, Wilson says the hope is to have audience members feel like they’re entering a speakeasy.

“People can come in, have a drink, listen to music, then, at about 8, we’ll usher folks back into the theater space,” he says. “At the end of the show, everybody can head back to the bar, have a nightcap and listen to more music.”

Onomatopoeia’s “Hughie” runs April 18-21 at The Basement, 300 E. Broad St., 23219. For more information, visit thebasementrva.org.