If you thought John Guare’s SIX DREGREES OF SEPARATION (@ BCA
through Nov. 22nd) couldn’t have much to say after twenty-five
years, you’d be mistaken. In fact, there’s a jolt in the dialogue which makes even
more impact now than it did in 1990.
Guare’s play, inspired by real events, concerns several
wealthy New Yorkers who were taken in by an imposter claiming to be friends
with their children. They put him up for the night and when he tells them he is
Sydney Poitier’s son, they fawn over him in hopes of rubbing elbows with his
famous father.
The wife of an ambitious art dealer in whose home he stayed
can’t bring herself to hate him. After all, he didn’t take anything from their
lavish apartment. She urges him to turn himself in to the police just to
explain. When he’s skeptical about the treatment he’ll receive, she says with a
chuckle, “I don’t think they’ll kill you.” To which he replies “I’m black.”
Now, thanks to the internet and cell phone cameras, even rich
people know what Fats Waller knew in 1935 (“I’m white on the inside but that
don’t help my case” from Waller’s Black and Blue): If you’re black, you
can be killed for far less.
Guare doesn’t just tell a story, he indicts the rich and their
entitled, Ivy League children with blistering comedy. Their shallow lifestyle
and lack of moral fiber is held up to ridicule—and to extensive examination in the more preachy (“You’re not
what you think you are”) parts of the play.
Bad Habit’s production has one of Boston’s best directors at
the helm: Liz Fenstermaker wisely highlights the humor she can mine from the
nasty, privileged children who have no patience, or respect for that matter,
for their affluent parents—and
she plays those confrontations just short of farce. They’re hilarious, a nifty
counterpoint to the Sturm und Drang of the expositional scenes.
Fenstermaker’s cast is tops, with Christine Power and Steven
L. Emanuelson wonderfully obtuse as the prosperous couple at the center of the
story who welcome Elyas Deen Harris as their counterfeit guest. Janelle Mills
and Steve Auger (“I don’t want to know!”) are quite amusing as the second
couple the mysterious Harris is able to fool.
Dani Berkowitz, Kevin Hanley, Ben Heath and Alex Portenko as
the disagreeable young people (and other characters) are deliciously offensive.
Best of all is C.D. Matthew Murphy in three distinct roles, as a South African
wheeler dealer who can put his hands on two million dollars at the drop of a
hat, then as a hard boiled city cop and as a lonely, gullible doctor. It’s fine ensemble work. Don’t miss it.
