The theory is that everyone is connected to everyone else through a maximum of six people. I know someone who knows someone who knows Barack Obama or Emmanuel Macon, the President-elect of France, or a peasant farmer in Peru. That’s the premise put forth in John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation now in an enticing revival at the Barrymore Theater. The play reminds us that we are all a bit star-struck and will ignore any prejudices if connected to celebrity.
Having seen the original 1990 production and the film version a few years later, I had remembered the basic ideas of the show and the stars (Stockard Channing, John Cunningham) but little else. I found myself watching it as if for the first time and even wondering if this was a newer, fresher version. My colleague, who had also seen it before, assured me it wasn’t and that even the nudity was in the original. This revival is a reminder of just what a fine play it is and how creatively it is staged.
An African-American man shows up at the door of a wealthy Upper East Side couple, Ouisa (Allison Janney) and Flan Kittredge (John Benjamin Hickey). He claims to have been mugged in Central Park and says that he knows their children from Harvard. Most impressive to the couple is his claim that he’s the son of the legendary actor and director Sidney Poitier. (Written in the days before cell phones and the Internet, the couple can’t verify his claims and instead they must rely upon his persona and the information he provides.) They take him in for the evening, and he cooks them dinner and turns on the charm. They are entranced by him and, despite their sophistication, are even tempted by his promise to cast them as extras in his father’s movie version of Cats. Paul is sophisticated, intelligent and worldly. They give him money and then wake up to find him with a nude male prostitute. Later, they will find they were not the only ones to have been duped as they, and we, are introduced to an interconnected web of characters.