Podcasts

Woman Around Town’s Editor Charlene Giannetti and writers for the website talk with the women and men making news in New York, Washington, D.C., and other cities around the world. Thanks to Ian Herman for his wonderful piano introduction.

Ben Stanton

Six Degrees of Separation Returns with Bite

05/05/2017

Six Degrees of Separation was inspired by the true story of con man David Hampton who, in the 1980s, ingratiated himself with several well heeled Manhattan residents by misrepresenting himself as a friend of their children and the son of Sidney Poitier. The young man evoked sympathy garnering various gifts and assistance. One couple allowed him to spend the night only to discover two strangers occupying the morning guestroom. Hampton was eventually caught, tried and acquitted.

Playwright John Guare found himself fascinated with the ease with which Hampton accomplished his deception, particularly the way it reflected on the moneyed class he snookered. (He had the story firsthand from friends who’d believed the boy.) What made the grifter so appealing and relatable to his hosts? Did he change their lives?

Six Degrees of Separation BROADWAYPLAY ETHEL BARRYMORE THEATRE 243 W. 47TH ST.

Allison Janney and Benjamin Hickey

Paul (Corey Hawkins) appears at the Fifth Avenue door of Ouisa (Allison Janey) and Flan (John Benjamin Hickey) unannounced and bleeding. He tells the couple he’s a Harvard friend of their children and having been mugged across the street in Central Park, remembered the Kittridges proximity. He’s eloquent and well dressed.

The interloper couldn’t have picked a worse night. Ouisa and Flan are entertaining Geoffrey (the somewhat unintelligible Michael Sieberry), a wealthy South African friend whom they hope will supply the last two million dollars of a deal to purchase and resell a Cezanne. (Flan is a discreet art dealer.) Still, they can’t turn the boy away. He’s not only immensely flattering but seems to know everything about them.

Before the evening ends, Paul has declared himself the son of Sidney Poitier (about whom he’s also well versed) and promised them Extra jobs in the artist’s imminent production of Cats-the movie (Ouisa calls Flan a “starfucker” for asking, but they’re both extremely impressed.) He’s regaled his captive audience with the text of his (stolen) thesis – a theory that the iconic Catcher in the Rye has turned into “a manifesto of hate” (the red deer hunter hat is conjectured as indicating a killer of men), whipped up five star pasta, and indirectly secured Flan’s investment funds.

Six Degrees of Separation BROADWAYPLAY ETHEL BARRYMORE THEATRE 243 W. 47TH ST.

Lisa Emery, Michael Countryman, Allison Janney, Ned Eisenberg, John Benjamin Hickey

The next morning, Ouisa goes in to wake their guest so he might meet his dad at The Sherry Netherland and finds him having sex with another boy. Outraged, she throws them both out. (James Cusati-Moyer’s wild turn as the naked hustler is wonderfully played and directed.) “Give me back my $50.00!” demands Flan. “I spent it,” Paul responds nodding towards his company. “Please don’t tell my father, he doesn’t know…”

At this point, friends Kitty (Lisa Emery) and Larkin (Michael Countryman) show up with a similar story, bragging the anecdote. The group realizes they’ve been taken. A police detective (Paul O’Brien) can be no help. What are the charges?! By the time Dr. Fine has given Paul his brownstone keys and a young couple who can ill afford it are ripped off (a splendidly imagined tangent), Paul seems unstoppable.

In search of answers, the adults interview their collective kids, Tess (Colby Minifie), Woody (Keenan Jolliff) and Ben (Ned Riseley). (One remains at Groton.)  Instead of help, the spoiled young people unleash anger and disparagement. (This is hysterically performed and directed.) Tess, however, tracks a theory to Paul’s ignominious “origin.” (Chris Perfetti does a fine job as Trent, the link here.)

        Lisa Emery, Ned Eisenberg, Cody Kostro, Keenan Jolliff, John Benjamin Hickey,         Allison Janney, Ned Riseley, Colby Minifie, Michael Countryman

The rest of the play, in fact the piece, centers on Ouisa’s strong connection to the needy, aspiring Paul who continues, rife with delusions, to reach out until captured. An existence with which she’s been content seemed suddenly as much an illusion as the young man’s masquerade and for reasons just as compelling.

Playwright John Guare’s 27 year-old piece holds just as much bite as it did when it emerged. Sharp satire is enhanced by on-target detail and wry syntax. Current purveyors of “fake news” give it an additional dimension. Paul’s theory about the Saroyan classic is clever. Flan’s muses on art are erudite. Watch for the second Paul reverts, when he tells Ouisa he likes being watched.

Ouisa’s hypothesis that everyone is linked to everyone else through six acquaintances (here, the boy who taught Paul how to seem as if he belonged and children of those duped) has beco0me a part of modern lexicon. “I find that A) tremendously comforting that we’re so close and B) like Chinese water torture that we’re so close. Because you  have to find the right six people to make the connection,” she declares towards the end of the tale.

Six Degrees of Separation BROADWAYPLAY ETHEL BARRYMORE THEATRE 243 W. 47TH ST.

Corey Hawkins and Allison Janney

Allison Janney (Ouisa) is splendid, her appreciable comedic talents well showcased. Expression, tone, pitch perfect timing, and patrician demeanor make the actress a pleasure to watch. Despite being drawn to and moved by Paul, Janney’s take on Ouisa does not emulate that of Stockard Channing who played the character at Lincoln Center and in the film. Janney is less visibly emotional, more pragmatic. Still we see the shift.

John Benjamin Hickey does a yeoman like job but is miscast, lacking an Alpha Male persona.

As Paul, Corey Hawkins gives us a well honed Tom Ripley-like character (Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley) an absorber of others’ lives at all costs. He’s convincingly Ivy League when spinning webs and frighteningly street predatory in a flashback. Unlike Tom, this young man lacks luck and funding or he might be out there still.

Of the supporting cast, Colby Minifie makes Tess as credibly smart as she is whiney and demanding; Peter Mark Kendall manifests a young victim named Rick with naivete, excitement, and shock; Ned Eisenberg imbues Dr. Fine with querulous confidence.

Director Trip Cullman offers an interpretation with black humored snap and imagination. Staging is minimal and sharp-edged. When emotion shows itself, it’s all the more effective.

Mark Wendland’s stark RED set is unnerving from the get-go which somewhat telegraphs issues to come and perhaps shouldn’t. Hanging a large, two-sided Kandinsky which figures in the piece, high above heads works well as a symbol. Minimal furniture is exactly right. Clint Ramos’ Costumes don’t look sufficiently expensive. Ben Stanton’s often imaginative Lighting Design emphasizes rigidity and pith.

Photos by Joan Marcus
Opening: Corey Hawkins; John Benjamin Hickey & Allison Janney

 

Six Degrees of Separation by John Guare
Directed by Trip Cullman
Ethel Barrymore Theatre
243 West 47th Street

Incognito – Reflections On the Human Brain

06/03/2016

Nick Payne’s Constellations, (on Broadway in 2015), poetically explored The String Theory of Quantum Physics: In layman’s terms, what happens to everything else when a single aspect of a scenario changes and is it happening simultaneously on another plane? The play’s program specified “Place: The Multiverse” = the juncture? of multiple universes. Still fascinated with questions of free will, time, memory, and the way we function, the prolific playwright/intellectual here takes the human brain as its subject. One again drama is the medium.

Four excellent actors: Geveva Carr, Charlie Cox, Heather Lind, and Morgan Spector play a multitude of characters including psychologists, scientists, patients, a lawyer, a journalist…with turn-on-a-dime American and British accents. The piece, like its predecessor, is episodic, here broken into three larger chapters: ENCODING, STORING, and RETRIEVING, each begun with robotic voguing (by Peter Pucci) and a walk around the circular staging area accompanied by spacey electronic sounds/music. (David Van Tieghem) It’s a kind of a human rondo.

Incognito Manhattan Theatre Club - Stage 1

Morgan Spector, Geneva Carr

Identifiable stories play through in fragments. When Albert Einstein died, Princeton pathologist Thomas Harvey, conducting his autopsy (Morgan Spector), had a carpe diem moment and, turning to the icon’s executor, asked whether he might take the brain…which ends up in the trunk of his car before being dissected and studied…to little avail.

Martha (Geneva Carr, whose natural stage presence allows her to morph with focus), the adopted granddaughter of Einstein’s son and a clinical neuropsychologist, is approached by self-serving journalist, Michael (Charlie Cox) with questions of her paternity. Might she, in fact, be Einstein’s illicit daughter? (Not so far-fetched based on evidence.) All she has to do is take a DNA sample from Einstein’s brain to find out. That is, when Michael tracks it down.

Incognito Manhattan Theatre Club - Stage 1

Heather Lind, Geneva Carr

The intrepid headline hound convinces Doctor Harvey to accompany him cross country with a piece of the brain in order to see Einstein’s daughter –no love lost there – Evelyn (Carr), and request that sample. They drive. (How is one to airline check a brain fragment?)

Martha is, for the first time, exploring a gay relationship with Patricia (Heather Lind with a butch persona), also an adopted child, who would like her to help a lawyer friend (Spector) with professional testimony in a murder trial.

Anthony (a credibly on-the-verge Spector) is in and out of therapy (including with a compassionate but helpless Martha) and on Dagwood combinations of medication… rendering him impotent. About to embark on his honeymoon, he stops his meds, is fine for several days, then strangles his new bride to death, remembering nothing.

Incognito Manhattan Theatre Club - Stage 1

Heather Lind, Charlie Cox

Henry’s (a wonderfully innocent and touching Charlie Cox) amnesiac brain is poorly wired, though whether before or after an operation is unclear. His attention span is three to four thoughts, then everything starts fresh. The patient’s fiancé Margaret (Heather Lind) tries patiently (and palpably) to help, especially wanting him to regain his music, but gives up in despair. Doctors change over time…until Martha appears, triggering a moment of clarity/progress or, perhaps, just in the right place at the right time.

I’m sure I’ve left people and connections out. All four actors are top notch, but this is an impressionistic piece. Emotions are felt only in passing except perhaps those provoked by Henry who appears throughout. The mechanism we call brain retains its secrets.

Director Doug Hughes brings what humanity he can to the passing parade, keeps things moving and characters from becoming static.

Ben Stanton’s Lighting, Scott Pask’s minimal Set and Catherine Zuber’s grey-tone costumes collectively create an ephemeral canvas.

Incognito Manhattan Theatre Club - Stage 1

Photos by Joan Marcus
Opening: Geneva Carr (back), Morgan Spector, Heather Lind, Charlie Cox

Manhattan Theatre Club presents
Incognito by Nick Payne
Directed by Doug Hughes
City Center Stage 1
151 West 55th Street
Through July 10, 2016