SIX DEGREES SPOOFS UPPER-CLASS PRETENTIONS
Sonoma Arts Live (SAL) has launched an ambitious production of Six Degrees of Separation, John Guare’s now-classic tale of belief and deception among New York City socialites.
Purportedly based on a real story, Six Degrees played on Broadway before becoming a 1993 film starring Donald Sutherland and, from the Lincoln Center production, Stockard Channing. It concerns a married pair of private art dealers and a young con artist who worms his way into their lives by pretending not only to be a classmate of their children, but the son of actor Sidney Poitier. The ruse works beautifully in the Libby Oberlin-helmed stage play at Andrews Hall in downtown Sonoma. The production runs through February 16.
North Bay stalwart Jonathen Blue stars as Paul, the deceiver who lands at the Kittredge apartment with a story of having been mugged in the park and having lost all his possessions to the robbers. He’s even got a knife wound above his beltline as proof. Flan and Ouisa (Larry Williams and Mary Samson) take him in—and he takes them in, with a lengthy, well-rehearsed but quite plausible recitation of his attendance at a Swiss boarding school, his friendships with the Kittredge offspring, and his upbringing with a superstar father. He seals the deal by preparing a sumptuous meal for them and a guest, a South African mine owner and art fancier named Geoffrey (Lukas Raphael).
A subplot is that Geoffrey and Flan are working together to buy a “second-tier” Cezanne painting and resell it at enormous profit to some Japanese collectors. The sale will get the Kittredges out of serious financial difficulty. Hope runs rampant throughout the first act, amplified by their excitement about being one step away from a legendary performer of the last half of the 20th century, and Paul’s assurance that his father will find places for them as extras in an upcoming film.
People believe what they want to believe, even when facing evidence to the contrary. It’s a sad and often funny fact that’s been exploited by delusional manipulators since the dawn of time, and it works beautifully as a major comedic element in Six Degrees. Flan and Ouisa—especially Ouisa, passionately embodied by Samson—defend Paul even as reality and logic pile up against their assumptions.
Recruited for the show only two weeks before it opened, Mr. Williams does a great job depicting Flan’s vacillation between doubt, indignation, and anger, intermittently detouring into art-historical pontification about conceptual and technical problems faced by visual artists. His other obsession is his ultra-rare Kandinsky, painted front and rear. He may be in financial straits, but he’ll never part with that painting.
The turning point comes when Kittredge friends Larkin and Kitty (Sean O’Brien and Beth Allen Ethridge) and Dr. Fine (Lukas Raphael) all confess to having been duped by Paul. A tough-guy NYC detective (Tim Setzer) investigates, but none of the aggrieved can demonstrate evidence of a crime. They all invited him in; nothing has gone missing from their homes. The only crime is their gullibility.
Although this dramedy that uses dark humor features the hilarious specter of wealthy socialites getting jazzed about having bit parts in a film version of Cats, Oberlin’s production mines less of the comedy and more of the pathos in this enduring story. A cluster of young actors (Jake Druzgala, Pilar Gonzales, Jess Rodgers, and Felizia Rubio) appear as Paul’s ersatz classmates, co-conspirators, and street-hustler associates. Rubio is especially engaging.
Noting Guare’s stage direction that all the actors should be in the audience, Oberlin takes the fourth-wall-breaking edict to another level, with most of them onstage or near the stage throughout the show—a sort of Greek chorus effect. Despite reminding viewers that we are all participants in the card game of life, the formality somewhat blunts the comedy.
In a heart-rending coda, Ouisa learns the fate of the interloper without knowing his real name. Samson delivers this with great conviction—a reminder that sympathy for a fellow human can overcome the humiliation of having fallen for a harmless scam.
photos by Miller Oberlin, Oberlin Photography
Six Degrees of Separation
Sonoma Arts Live
Andrews Hall, Sonoma Community Center, 276 East Napa St. in Sonoma
ends on February 16, 2025
for tickets ($25-$42), call 707.484.4874 or visit Sonoma Arts
Barry Willis is a member of the American Theatre Critics Circle and president of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Contact: [email protected]
