Mulatto received mixed criticism when it was first produced on Broadway in 1935. As James A. Emanuel notes in his entry on Hughes in Twayne's United States Authors Series Online, "Mulatto was widely reviewed. Most critics called it artless, interesting, or sincere." The diversity of criticism was due in part to the fact that the Broadway version of the play was radically different from what Hughes had written. The producer, Martin Jones, changed the play significantly from Hughes's written version. As Deborah Martinson notes in her 2000 entry on Hughes for the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Jones "rewrote large parts of it, added a gratuitous rape scene, and emphasized sexual aspects to draw a Broadway audience."' Unfortunately, while the play was extremely successful and set a record by running on Broadway for a year—at that time, longer than any other play that had been written...