Revisiting a 1990 study of race, class and belonging

In some respects, John Guare's acclaimed play "Six Degrees of Separation" (now on view at Richard Hugo House) is very much rooted in 1990 — the year of its setting, and world premiere.

Way back there in the pre-dot.com Stone Age, there was no handy Internet access to check out an appealing young hustler's claims that: A) He was the son of famed movie star Sidney Poitier; and B) Poitier, in a bizarre career move, was directing a movie of the musical "Cats."

A quick Web check would prove both assertions false.

But even now, with so much celebrity info at our fingertips, one imagines the fabulist African-American hustler Paul (played in the Repertory Actors Theatre staging by Joseph Mascorella) would find a way to bamboozle the uppercrust Manhattanites Ouisa (Eloisa Cardona) and her art-dealer husband, Flan (Dennis Kleinsmith).

For "Six Degrees" is only partly a social satire of a specific New York moment and milieu. More enduringly, it is an archetypal study of how a con artist's charades can unmask the terrors and longings of those he cons.

Loosely inspired by the exploits of an actual con man, the play is precisely staged, if not fully illuminated, in ReAct's fringe mounting by director David Hsieh.

On Hsieh's spare set, equipped with useful sliding doors and a suspended, two-sided painting (a convincing fake of a Kandinsky), Ouisa and Flan are briefly but thoroughly taken in by Mascorella's attractive drifter.

Polite, erudite, flattering, Paul is far nicer to the couple than their own bratty, college-age kids. Paul knows just how to play the pair, exploiting their political sympathies, their snobberies and their all-too-human desire to be extras in that alleged film of "Cats."

ReAct's production is on solid footing in the first half of the 90-minute work, during Paul's initial seduction of his new marks. It is less adept at capturing the tricky mingling of ironic comedy, anger and angst after Ouisa and Flan join a chorus of other New Yorkers hustled by Paul.

As broader questions of class, race and human inter-connectedness are raised, ReAct's use of cross-racial casting — assigning some roles written as white characters to actors of color — is workable in some cases (Asian-American actress Cardona's Ouisa, for instance) and off-kilter in others.

Originally, Paul was the only black character, making him a lightning rod for both liberal guilt and latent racism. That effect has been shifted and diluted, by having African Americans play some of the other duped urbanites.

The acting is uneven. But with 20 roles, "Six Degrees" rarely gets staged here. Glitches and all, ReAct's airing merits attention.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com