Breaking News: Allison Janney & John Benjamin Hickey Will Return to Broadway in SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION

Producer Stuart Thompson announced today that John Guare's critically acclaimed play Six Degrees of Separation will return to Broadway this spring in a revival starring seven-time Emmy Award winner Allison Janney ("Mom," The Girl on the Train) as Ouisa and Tony Award winner John Benjamin Hickey (The Normal Heart, "Manhattan") as Flan. Trip Cullman (Significant Other, Punk Rock) will direct the production, which is set to open at the Barrymore Theatre in April 2017 and will run for 15 weeks only.

Full casting, design team and production dates will be announced at a later date.

Inspired by a true story, the play follows the trail of a young black con man, Paul, who insinuates himself into the lives of a wealthy New York couple, Ouisa and Flan Kittredge, saying he knows their son at college. Claiming he's the son of actor Sidney Poitier, Paul tells them he has just been mugged and all his money is gone. Captivated by Paul's intelligence (and the possibility of appearing in his father's new movie), the Kittredges invite him to stay overnight. After finding him in bed with a hustler, their picture of Paul changes, and Ouisa and Flan turn detective trying to piece together the connections that gave him access to their lives. Meanwhile, Paul's cons unexpectedly lead him into darker territory as his lies begin to catch up with him.

John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation premiered off-Broadway at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater on May 16, 1990 before moving to the Vivian Beaumont Theater on November 8, 1990. The play received the 1991 New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, an Obie award for the playwright, and the 1993 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.

The Broadway revival is produced by Stuart Thompson and Tim Levy.

Allison Janney (Ouisa). The incredibly versatile Allison Janney has taken her place among a select group of actors who combine a leading lady's profile with a character actor's art of performance. Currently starring alongside Anna Faris in the CBS/Chuck Lorre sitcom, "Mom," Janney also received rave reviews for her turn as Margaret Scully on Showtime's groundbreaking drama "Masters of Sex." Janney won Emmys for both roles in the same year; a feat that has only been done twice before in Emmy history. She won a second Emmy for "Mom" the following year, bringing her total number of ATAS statues to seven. She has had three feature films released recently: Tallulah which reunited her with Ellen Page, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children for director Tim Burton, andThe Girl on the Train, collaborating again with longtime friend, director Tate Taylor. Janney also appeared in two of last summer's biggest box office titles: the adorably animated Minions and Spy with Melissa McCarthy. Previous feature work includes The Duff, Jason Bateman's directorial debut, Bad Words, the Dreamworks' animated film Mr. Peabody & Sherman, and The Way, Way Back with Steve Carell and Toni Collette. Additionally, she co-starred in the much anticipated feature film The Help based on the best-selling novel of the same name. For their extraordinary performances, the cast won Ensemble awards from the Screen Actors Guild, National Board of Review and the Broadcast Film Critics. The film was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. Janney has also delighted audiences with outstanding performances in the Oscar-winning ensemble hit Juno and in the movie version of the Tony Award winning play Hairspray. For her role in Todd Solondz's film Life During Wartime she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress by the Spirit Awards. She also appeared in Sam Mendes' Away We Go, the comedy Strangers with Candy, and was heard as the voice of Gladys in Dreamworks' animated film Over the Hedge as well as Peach in Finding Nemo. She received another Spirit Award nomination for her work in the independent feature Our Very Own, and starred opposite Meryl Streep in The Hours, which received a SAG Award nomination for Outstanding Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture. Other feature credits include the Academy Award winning film American Beauty (for which she won a SAG Award for Outstanding Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture) as well as Nurse Betty, How to Deal, Drop Dead Gorgeous, 10 Things I Hate About You, Primary Colors, The Ice Storm, Six Days Seven Nights, The Object of My Affection, and Big Night. Throughout her career Janney has made a handful of memorable guest-star appearances on television, but she is renowned for her starring role in the acclaimed NBC series "The West Wing," where she won a remarkable four Emmy Awards and four SAG Awards for her portrayal of White House Press Secretary CJ Cregg. While a freshman studying acting at Kenyon College in Ohio, Janney auditioned for a play that Paul Newman was directing and got the part. Soon after, Newman and his wife JoAnne Woodward suggested she study at The Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. She followed their advice and went on to make her Broadway debut in Noel Coward's Present Laughter for which she earned the Outer Critics Circle Award and Clarence Derwent Award. She also appeared in Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge, receiving her first Tony Award nomination and winning the Outer Critics Circle Award. Janney was last seen on Broadway in the musical 9 to 5, for which she earned a Tony nomination and won the Drama Desk Award.

John Benjamin Hickey (Flan) recently starred as Frank Winter in the critically acclaimed WGN America series Manhattan. John's film credits include Truth, Big Stone Gap, Get on Up, Pitch Perfect, Flags of Our Fathers, The Anniversary Party, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and The Taking of Pelham 123. John can currently be seen in the Netflix-released film Tallulah, which premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. Most recently, he wrapped on Black Bear Pictures' Barry, a Barack Obama biopic that premiered at TIFF; Scott Cooper's Hostiles, starring Christian Bale, Rosamund Pike, Jesse Plemons, and Ben Foster; and George Wolfe's HBO feature The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. On television, he received an Emmy Award nomination for his work on the Showtime series "The Big C," playing Laura Linney's brother, Sean. He also recurred on the hit CBS television series "The Good Wife" playing internet billionaire Neil Gross. Other television credits include "Modern Family," "Hannibal," "The New Normal," "Sex and the City," and "Law & Order." On Broadway, John won the 2011 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play and a Drama Desk Award for his performance in The Normal Heart. His other credits include Mary Stuart, The Crucible, Cabaret, and Love! Valour! Compassion! for which he won an Obie Award. Earlier this year, John was back on stage in Peter Parnell's Dada Woof Papa Hot at Lincoln Center for director Scott Ellis.

John Guare (Playwright). John Guare's plays include Landscape of the Body, A Free Man Of Color (Pulitzer Prize finalist), House of Blue Leaves, (Obie / NY Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play), Six Degrees of Separation, (Obie / NY Drama Critics Circle Award, London's Olivier Award for Best Play), Two Gentlemen of Verona (NY Drama Critics Circle Award, Tony Award for Best Musical), Muzeeka (Obie), Sweet Smell of Success (Tony nomination for Best Book of a Musical), Lydie Breeze. Screenplays:Taking Off (with Milos Forman, Jury Prize Cannes Film Festival), Atlantic City (NY/LA Film Critics Award / Venice Film Festival Best Film, Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay), Six Degrees of Separation. He's won the PEN Master Dramatist Award and the Gold Medal in Drama from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has taught at Yale, Princeton, Harvard, NYU and Juilliard. He is a council member of the Dramatists Guild and co-edits the Lincoln Center Theater Review.

Trip Cullman (Director). Select NYC: Leslye Headland's The Layover (Second Stage), Halley Feiffer's A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Gynecologic Oncology Unit At Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Of New York City (MCC), Joshua Harmon's Significant Other (Roundabout), Feiffer's I'm Gonna Pray For You So Hard (Atlantic), Simon Stephens's Punk Rock (MCC, Obie Award), Jon Robin Baitz's The Substance of Fire (Second Stage), Tarrell Alvin McCraney's Choir Boy (MTC), Julia Jordan and Juliana Nash's Murder Ballad (MTC and Union Square Theatre), Paul Weitz's Lonely, I'm Not (Second Stage), Headland's Assistance (Playwrights Horizons), Adam Bock's A Small Fire (Playwrights Horizons, Drama Desk nom.), Adam Rapp's The Hallway Trilogy: Nursing (Rattlestick), Headland's Bachelorette (Second Stage), Terrence McNally's Some Men (Second Stage), Bert V. Royal's Dog Sees God (Century Center), Bock's The Drunken City (Playwrights Horizons), Weitz's Roulette (EST), Jonathan Tolins's The Last Sunday In June (Rattlestick and Century Center), Bock's Swimming In The Shallows (Second Stage), Gina Gionfriddo's US Drag (stageFARM), and several productions with The Play Company. London: Bock's The Colby Sisters of Pittsburgh, PA (Tricycle). Select regional: McCraney's Choir Boy (Geffen and Alliance, NAACP and Suzi Bass awards), John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation (Old Globe), Richard Greenberg's The Injured Party (South Coast Rep), McNally's Unusual Acts of Devotion (La Jolla Playhouse), Christopher Durang's Betty's Summer Vacation (Bay Street), Bess Wohl's Touched (Williamstown Theater Festival), Michael Friedman and Danny Goldstein's Unknown Soldier (WTF), Wohl's Barcelona (Geffen), Tennessee Williams's The Rose Tattoo (WTF). Upcoming: Anna Jordan's Yen (MCC), Harmon's Significant Other (Booth).