‘SIX’ AND THE CITY
‘Degrees’ still resonates: star
NEW YORK actor John Benjamin Hickey always stands straighter when he works alongside 6-foot-tall Allison Janney.
“We are the same height until she puts her f-----g heels on,” he told the Daily News. “Then I’m like this.” He craned his neck, as if gazing at the top of a skyscraper.
“I kind of like it,” added Hickey, who’s known for the sitcom “It’s All Relative” and the AIDS drama “The Normal Heart,” for which he won a Tony. “I think of Sophia Loren and Carlo Ponti. Or maybe Sonny and Cher.”
Not always seeing eye-to-eye works for their roles in the Broadway revival of John Guare’s 1990 Tony- and Pulitzer-nominated play, “Six Degrees of Separation,” which begins previews this week.
Hickey plays Flan, an art dealer; Janney is Ouisa, his socialite wife. When the well-heeled, well-connected couple is duped by a young con man (Corey Hawkins, of “Straight Outta Compton”) the spouses’ responses illuminate their essential differences.
Hickey, 53, marvels at the current resonance of the play and a 1993 movie adaptation. The story is about how we are all linked and it has returned at a time of building walls. “People are feeling so disconnected from people right outside their window,” he said.
But on and off stage, Hickey and Janney are very close. “Our paths have intersected many times over the past 20 years,” Janney told The News. “We have such a great history together and a wonderful friendship.” It began with the Off-Broadway play “Blue Window” in 1996. They acted together in “The Autumn Garden” in 2007 at the Williamstown Theater Festival.
“We were also cast as a couple in ‘The First Wives Club,’” Janney said. “We sat around in the trailer waiting to do our scene only to find out they cut the scene altogether. We still get residual checks for that.”
A little extra dough never hurts in Manhattan, where Hickey and his partner Jeffrey Richman, a “Modern Family” producer, live in the West Village. Their home is a daily reminder of how lives connect six degrees-style.
Actress Mary Louise Wilson lives in the same building. She and Hickey were in the hot-ticket revival of “Cabaret” in 1998. Wilson’s nephew became Hickey’s real estate agent and sealed the deal on his home.
“My mother bought this apartment with me because I couldn’t afford the down payment,” said Hickey. “Mary Louise said, ‘Let me call one of my friends. She can play your mom at the board meeting.’ I said, ‘No, no.’ I didn’t want to lose the opportunity to live in this building.
“My mother came in from Texas,” he added. “The board members looked at me and said, ‘Can you get house seats to ‘Cabaret’? I said, ‘I think I can.’ They said, ‘OK, you’re in.’”
“Six Degrees of Separation” begins previews on Wednesday and opens April 25 at the Barrymore Theatre.