Ouisa Ketridge, the wife of a wealthy "hand-to-mouth" art dealer, seems to articulate the great failure-and triumph-of John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation: it seems to include "everything between the inexorable bookends of life." Guare covers an almost impossibly vast terrain, from the failure of society to realize the talent of its brilliant, young black protagonist to the barrenness of Upper East Side New York and the "luxurious despair" of its children. Not unlike Chekhov, Guare lapses into heady monologues in Six Degrees, but saves the play by counterpointing them with dizzying action. But it is Guare's stunning reproduction of the desultory style of high society and his insight into its barrenness that makes for a breathless audience.
Gone are the vistas of Park Avenue, the sumptous cocktail room at Le Cirque, and the reversible Kandinsky that the cinematic version of Six Degrees flaunted with such success. The play, brilliantly directed by Amina Henry, SY '98, and, without exception, extraordinarily well-performed, loses nothing by returning Guare's script to the theater. Indeed, the play is more self-conscious than most about its theatricality, from the Ketridges, who make a living from acting the part of the affable social stars, to Paul, who admits it gives him great pleasure to be "looked at."
Flan and Ouisa begin the play by confiding to the audience the story of Paul "Poitier" much as they would any gossip at a cocktail party: "We're trying to keep it abstract. Plus libel," they confess. But in spite of themselves, they launch into a tale that promises to be more than just dinner conversation. Claiming to be their children's friend from Harvard, the injured Paul storms into the Ketridge's Fifth Avenue apartment after an alleged mugging.
Feigning the part of Sidney Poitier's son, Paul invents a past of Swiss boarding schools, luxurious abandonment with his mother, and only a recent acquaintance with "American-style" racism. But as he reads his "stolen" thesis to his enthralled hosts, he speaks not as a privileged preppie, but as somebody who is marginalized. He concludes that in a society full of phonies, people are afraid to look at themselves and at each other. "God's gift," he ends, "is to make the act of self-examination bearable."
Although the peformances in Six Degrees were on the whole even-at times brilliant-some of the actors borrowed wholesale from the interpretations in the cinematic version. Ian Doesher, SY '99, in his renditions of the hustler, Doug, the son of Dr. Fines, and Rick, the naive Middle American, acted his parts with an admirable versatility, but seemed to have duplicated all the mannerisms of his celluloid counterparts. Joel Lazovitz, TC '99, competent in his role as Larkin, the Ketridge's acquaintance, also performed the role of Trent splendidly. The scene in which he exchanges family secrets with the still-raw Paul in exchange for sexual favors is an appropriate melange of the eerie and the erotic.
Amina Henry's concern for detail manifests itself in unexpected and hilarious ways: although Anna Carlson, DC '99, is convincing enough acting the role of the proper Midwesterner, her spanking new Sassoon jeans and belly-baring shirt certainly help. Julian Heaton, CC '98, who played Larkin's wife, Kitty, was adequate but not memorable, while Patricio Boyer, BK '98, interprets four roles without any crises. His dabbling into multiple personalities proved to be quite successful as the Ketridges' malcontent, handsome son, Woody (although he sometimes forgot to remove his Sheriff's badge from his previous stints as policeman and detective).
Aaron Ship, BK '96, interprets the demanding role of Paul with a high degree of sophistication uncommon in an undergraduate actor. He tackles the changing personalities of Paul-alternatively self-confident, needy, selfish, giving-with great sensitivity. Niel Prunier handles the part of Flan with less care. Certainly he is always the eptiome of the educated, attractive WASP, but at times his interpretations are flat and one-dimensional; he often recourses to a caricaturesque grimacing, for example, to express annoyance.
The highest accolades go to Rachel Gordan, ES '99, as the ultimate New Yorker: intelligent, at times demanding, abrasive, but in the end gentle and compassionate. Gordan is sensitive to all these facets of Ouisa's character, and through her memorable performance, perhaps goes as far as to deepen her role beyond what even Guare might have intended. Eryn Rosenthal, BK '98, had to overcome the limitations of her own small role as Tess, Flan and Ouisa's daughter, but she did so with a remarkable penetration into the humor of Tess's frustration and self-dramatizing tendencies.
Guare's play does not, however, end as Ouisa would have it. Tearing apart the false identity of privilege with which he entered their lives, he admits with a chilling sincerity, ÔMrs. Louis Ketridge, I am black.' Paul disappears in the New York prison system, but not without having sounded out the extreme hollowness and discontent of the lives he touched.
Copyright 1996, The Yale Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
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