Six Degrees of Separation

Financial Times“At times it begins to feel a little like a Dan Brown novel...” Unlike Brown, however, Guare can write characters with depth. Yet David Grindley’s production does not give them full rein. His staging is as fluent as usual, but it suffers from his occasional affliction of not going very far beneath the surface..

The Stage“In the end, the play is not very persuasive, but Abili’s performance is..” After a far from engaging start, David Grindley’s poorly lit production hits its stride about halfway through, and both Manville and Anthony Head, who plays her husband, manage to convey the emptiness at the heart of their lives...

The Independent“The acting is extraordinarily fine...” The play, with its non-chronological revelations about the black boy's background and widespread effect, constitutes a kind of darkly comic psychomachia via which a whole way of ostensibly well-meaning liberal life is placed under the microscope...

The Times“The satire seems over-familiar in 2010...” There’s still something troubling and touching in Guare’s portrait of fragmentation, rootlessness and a young man’s attempt to reinvent himself through the power of his imagination. I felt that Six Degrees was worth this lively, absorbing reviv

Whatsonstage.com“Now seems ever so slightly passé...” One really clever thing about the play, smartly directed by David Grindley, is that it springs back on itself, retaining a current vivacity as well as an anecdotal fascination. It’s wonderful how the stage keeps filling with new people...

The Telegraph“The play itself is more con trick than classic...” A greater, gutsier dramatist would have made more of his story. The mood of wry comedy, with the husband and wife at the play’s centre acting as narrators, is a touch cosy, while most of the supporting cast are mere ciphers...

this is london“Contains some zingy moments, but it’s a gimmicky and rather dated satire.” We are left wishing the characters were less like hard-edged objects and more rounded emotionally. Grindley’s production intriguingly hints that our lives are all confidence tricks. It has pace and wit, but not in the end a great deal of substance.

Guardian“Head and Redford lend weight and substance to underwritten roles...” while the play compresses a good deal into 90 uninterrupted minutues, it never moves one in the manner of the classic American plays that use disintegrating families as a metaphor for society's failures...

Remotegoat.co.uk“Not yet reviewed...”

Time Out“Not yet reviewed...”