You may think you know this play. Since its premiere in 1990, John Guare's observations on fashionable Manhattanites jolted out of their comfort zone by a hustler in search of glamour have been a popular fixture in the repertoires of commercial companies and after-school drama clubs alike. Ah, but like the double-sided Kandinsky painting that constitutes Six Degrees of Separation's central visual metaphor, the angle of our view changes how we interpret what we see, and attitudes toward the moneyed classes in 2018 are not what they were coming on the heels of the affluent Reagan years. Redtwist's tiny storefront, with spectators seated a single row deep around the perimeter of the playing space, facilitates an intimacy rendering it impossible to ignore the similarity between those for whom everything is a commodity to be exploited in sustenance of a "hand-to-mouth on a grand scale" lifestyle and those who see celebrity worship and greedhead values as a laudable goal to be achieved. With a major contest between hostile federations only weeks away, Guare's arguments witnessed in such close quarters take on renewed urgency.
