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Review: ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ at Old Globe Theatre

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A few things have changed since John Guare’s “Six Degrees of Separation” first held the mirror up to New York’s social-climbing nature nearly two decades ago. The 5th Avenue setting graduated from million- to billion-dollar deals, the Japanese lost their yen for tourist treasures, and international Ponzi schemes came to replace the more personalized (and relatively small potato) con games of yore.

But as the Old Globe production of Guare’s 1990 play makes clear, life is pretty much the same in the deluxe condos of the rich and rapacious. Then as now, money-making machinations take up most of the day and night. The kid’s education is still an unbeatable source of networking and status mongering. And transforming experience into sparkling dinner-party anecdotes remains the ultimate point of existence.

Guare knew of what he satirized, which perhaps explains the generosity of spirit that accompanies his comic dissection of the mores and manners of those conspicuously consuming urban types. Racing from charity function to the latest restaurant opening, these characters surround themselves with elegance and beauty, but in their competitive displays of good taste have lost sight of imagination and truth.

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A similar superficiality can be detected in the handling of this mostly enjoyable yet ultimately thin revival. Directed by Trip Cullman with a brisk, clean efficiency, the production doesn’t dwell long enough in Guare’s glistening shallows for us to become aware of the work’s hidden depths. The delivery is smart, slick and surface-oriented — an ice skate across a play that hasn’t lost its diamond clarity.

The cast is headed by Broadway veteran Karen Ziemba (a Tony-winner for “Contact”), who somehow exudes a reassuring sturdiness even when acting flighty. Here, she plays Ouisa, the spiffy wife and business accomplice of Flan Kittredge (Thomas Jay Ryan), an independent art dealer who flips masterpieces to foreign oligarchs for gigantic profits.

Stockard Channing justly received much acclaim for playing Ouisa onstage in the Lincoln Center Theater premiere and later in the 1993 movie adaptation, but it’s such a great role that no one talent should have a monopoly on it. Ziemba holds her own in the scintillating comic dimensions of this fast-talking New Yorker with two kids at Harvard, another at Groton, and a husband on the brink of a megabuck windfall. But the production isn’t interested in exploring a nuanced version of the character’s emotional journey.

Ouisa’s psychological awakening is precipitated by the intrusion of Paul (insinuatingly portrayed by Samuel Stricklen), a young black man who poses as the Ivy League chum of her children and the son of none other than Sidney Poitier. Claiming to have been mugged in Central Park, Paul barges into Ouisa and Flan’s posh abode just as the couple is courting Geoffrey (Tony Torn), a South African tycoon and a potential investor in Flan’s latest masterpiece scheme. This preppy fraud, a master at dropping all the right literary and celebrity names, has a virtual open-sesame into this exceedingly gullible Upper East Side club.

The thrill of discovering new connections — especially involving one whose famous father is supposedly coming to town to make a movie of “Cats” — excites Ouisa into recognizing the way that “every person is a new door, opening up into other worlds.” But if there turns out to be only “six degrees of separation” between any two strangers, there can still be a lot of darkness between friends and family members. (The young cast members nail the screaming resentment of privileged offspring.)

Like the two-sided Kandinsky in Ouisa and Flan’s living room, everyone hides a secret face. In Guare’s buoyantly comic view, we’re at once intimately linked and miles apart — an observation that is, if anything, even more resonant in our high-tech globalized era.

But though the production is impressive at first glance (Andromache Chalfant’s luxurious set design doesn’t bear scrutiny but gets the job done), the deeper meanings of the play float by like soap bubbles. This “Six Degrees” has charm but little bite.

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-- Charles McNulty

‘Six Degrees of Separation,’ Old Globe Theatre, Balboa Park, San Diego. 7 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends Feb. 15. $29-$66. (619) 23-GLOBE. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Caption: Karen Ziemba and Samuel Stricklen in ‘Six Degrees of Separation.’ Credit: Craig Schwartz

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