A lie of the mind

Imagination rules in Six Degrees

by Bill Rodriguez

SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION. By John Guare. Directed by Brien Lang. With Mark Anthony Brown, Paul Hoover and Sharon Carpentier. At NewGate Theatre through October 10.

Playwright John Guare created an enduring masterpiece when he wrote Six Degrees of Separation after being fascinated by a fraud who duped some friends of his in 1983. The 1990 Obie-wining play is comic in the way that human foibles are something to laugh and shake your head over. But it is also charged with engaging drama, the way ordinary acts can be when they offer insights.

NewGate Theatre is staging a worthy rendition. Under Brien Lang's direction, it captures the essence of the theater that is daily social life as well as the poignancy of human alienation, the flip side of the optimistic title.

On the Upper East Side, the comfortable lives of art dealer J. Flanders "Flan" Kittredge (Paul Hoover) and wife Ouisa (Sharon Carpentier) are interrupted by the arrival of a stranger. Paul (Mark Anthony Brown) has been mugged across the street in Central Park and claims to be a friend of their children who are attending Harvard, so they take him in and patch him up. He takes them in as well, cooking a gourmet meal, regaling them with his grace and wit and captivating intelligence. Paul even charms their visiting South African guest (Henrik Kromann), a potential source of funding for a multi-million-dollar art sale Flan is brokering. Paul claims to be the son of Sidney Poitier, and his hosts are going to be extras in a film adaptation of Cats that his father is making. It's the best social evening the Kittredges have had in recent memory -- until reality intrudes. In the wee hours, Ouisa finds herself screaming at a nearly naked male prostitute (Wickliffe Shreve) Paul has sneaked in, and all their carefully assembled beliefs about him come tumbling down. They chase the two strangers out.

The Cats bit is a nice touch. Guare chose the most ludicrous example he could to illustrate the susceptibility of people to believe what they want to believe. Six Degrees spends time examining social hypocrisy, upper crust mores, the ingratitude of children, and the labyrinthine judicial system. But the most recurring subject and theme is the imagination. As Paul says, "It's God's gift that makes the act of life bearable." Rather than a place of escape, he says, it teaches us what is worth attaining. For each of his observations, you can replace "imagination" with "theater" and see what a delicious exploration this was for the playwright.

Another couple (Barbara McElroy and Kromann) and a doctor friend (Tom Hurdle) fall for the same scam. This sets up an amusing confrontation scene with their college-age children, since the only common denominator with Paul is their high school friends. Guare revels in allowing the pampered kids to heap abuse on the ineptly well-intentioned parents, another example of how imagination rather than objectivity provides our only purchase on reality.

The acting all around is reliable. As Paul, Brown provides both the required charisma and vulnerability. The chemistry between Carpentier and Hoover as the Kittredges is convincing, especially when the latter reveals that a "no" from their money man that night would have ruined them. A crowd-pleaser among the others is John Capalbo as one of the sons, hilariously high-strung and shrill, all but projectile vomiting as he spews self-loathing on his helpless father.

The set design by William DeNiece is minimal and effective, a lush couch -- "sofa," we are instructed, in this milieu -- representing the rest of the opulence. (It's probably too much to ask for the thematic bravery of the original Off Broadway production, in which extended palms served as saucers beneath lifted pinkies as we imagined even props.) The costumes by Clare Blackmur were fittingly chic.

Guare made sure he wasn't being glib and one-sided about the power of imagination -- after all, Hitler imagined that the Third Reich would last 1000 years. A self-deluded and rationalizing Paul victimizes a young couple (Nicole DeRosa and Michael Alexson) who let him live in their slum flat. He not only steals their money but causes a death, which makes Paul even more desperate to become a different person, under the Kittredges patronage.

We care for Paul because he is no mere con man. He's not after money but rather, what -- acceptance, admiration, love? He's dying to be the person he made them imagine him to be -- which is the brilliantly capable person that, by the end, Ouisa is trying to get Paul to imagine he can become. Such a lovely epistemological gavotte.

Speaking of the power of making things up, Guare's "Paul" is far more interesting and edifying than the charlatan on whom it is based, David Hampton, who stole from his hosts and ineffectively sued the playwright. When it comes to imagination, con men don't have anything on a good second act.