Inspired by a true story, the play follows the trail of a young black con man, Paul, who insinuates himself into the lives of a wealthy New York couple, Ouisa and Flan Kittredge, saying he knows their son at college.
Producer Stuart Thompson announced that John Guare's critically acclaimed play Six Degrees of Separation will return to Broadway in a revival starring seven-time Emmy Award winner Allison Janney ("Mom," The Girl on the Train) as Ouisa and Tony Award winner John Benjamin Hickey (The Normal Heart, "Manhattan") as Flan.
Trip Cullman (Significant Other, Punk Rock) will direct the production, which is set to open at the Barrymore Theatre in April 2017 and will run for 15 weeks only.
The production, directed with compassion and merciless hilarity by Trip Cullman, has a wonderful, luxuriously large cast, with some actors dropping in for just a few perfectly pitched scenes. Allison Janney and John Benjamin Hickey are blissfully snooty yet insecure high-end art dealers who live on the edge of financial disaster in their sleek Fifth Avenue high-rise. It has been impeccably designed by Mark Wendland with the hanging two-sided Kandinsky (get it? two faces) and a red scrim revealing many other rooms and the skyline.
Even softened slightly as it is in this production, the play's brutal message to sophisticates, whether at the end of Reagan's era or the start of Trump's, comes through. We still do not know anyone but ourselves - and ourselves not too well, either. The idea that there are 'six degrees of separation' between any two people, which in Guare's formulation became a global catchphrase, is not merely a humanistic piety about interconnectedness; it's also a warning. Those six degrees are unbridgeable if you live on an island.
1990 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
1990 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
2010 | West End |
Old Vic Production West End |
2017 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Production Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2017 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Corey Hawkins |
2017 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Allison Janney |
2017 | Drama League Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Play | Six Degrees of Separation |
2017 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Actress in a Play | Allison Janney |
2017 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play | Corey Hawkins |
2017 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Six Degrees of Separation |
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