Stay Up With Hugo Best

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by Erin Somers

A timely, terrifically hilarious, and emotional debut about a young writer's assistant on a late-night comedy program and what happens when she accepts an offer from the show's mysterious host to spend a long weekend at his Connecticut house.

June Bloom, a broke, cynical twenty-nine-year-old writer's assistant on the late-night comedy program Stay Up with Hugo Best, is a broke, cynical twenty-nine-year-old writer's assistant. Hugo Best, who is in his sixties and is a well-known television and comedy star, is also a renowned womanizer. June ends up in a dive bar for an open-mic night and prepares for the sorrowful return to the anonymous comedian lifestyle after he abruptly departs and throws a party for his now-unemployed employees. She isn't anticipating a run-in with Hugo in that dive pub. Nor for the offer that follows: Hugo invites June to spend the extended Memorial Day weekend at his estate in Greenwich. "This isn't a joke," he maintains.

June accepts the position because she needs money and a job, and she is confident in her ability to manage herself, but she is secretly holding the remnants of a childhood infatuation on the charming older comic and former role model. June is realistic and clear-eyed enough to assume the precise parameters of the visit because they are never stated. Nonetheless, as the weekend progresses and the enigmatic Hugo progressively unveils himself, their relationship proves to be far more convoluted and unpredictable than she had anticipated.

Stay Up with Hugo Best is a tremendously current investigation of sexual politics in the #MeToo moment, as well as the unforgettable narrative of one young woman's heartbreaking fumbling into adulthood, that is both hilarious and poignant, wonderfully insightful and terrifically propulsive.