Allison Janney to star in “6 Degrees of Separation” on Broadway

PanARMENIAN.Net - Allison Janney is returning to Broadway.

The seven-time Emmy winner and star of Mom will headline a revival of Six Degrees of Separation, producer Stuart Thompson announced, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Trip Cullman will direct the new staging of John Guare's critically acclaimed play, also starring John Benjamin Hickey.

The 15-week limited engagement, produced by Thompson and Tim Levy, is set to open at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in April 2017. Additional casting will be announced at a later date.

Inspired by a true story, the play follows Paul, a young black con man who tells a wealthy New York couple, Ouisa (Janney) and Flan Kittredge (Hickey), that he knows their son at college and that he himself is the son of actor Sidney Poitier but has just been mugged. The couple invites Paul into their home, but their perception of him changes as his lies unravel.

Six Degrees of Separation first premiered off-Broadway at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater in 1990 before moving to the Vivian Beaumont Theater, a Broadway house, later that year. It received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best play, an Obie award for the playwright and the Laurence Olivier Award for best new play. It was a finalist for the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and received a Tony Award nomination for best play.

Janney made her Broadway debut in the 1996 revival of Present Laughter. She also starred in the 1997 revival of A View From the Bridge and the 2009 musical adaptation of 9 to 5, receiving Tony nominations for both performances. Hickey was last on Broadway in the 2011 revival of The Normal Heart, for which he won a Tony as best featured actor in a play.

The original Broadway production of Six Degrees of Separation starred Stockard Channing, John Cunningham and Courtney B. Vance. The play was adapted for the screen in 1993, with Channing reprising her role opposite Donald Sutherland and Will Smith. The revival is one of two plays being directed on Broadway in the spring by Cullman, who is also staging Joshua Harmon's Significant Other, opening March 2 at the Booth Theatre.