A young black man named Paul shows up at the home of art dealer Flan Kittredge and his wife Louisa, known simply as "Ouisa", who live overlooking Central Park in New York City.

Paul has a minor stab wound from an attempted mugging, and says he's a friend of their children at Harvard University.

Paul claims he is in New York to meet his father, Sidney Poitier, who is directing a film version of the Broadway musical Cats.

Soon after, Paul starts up another con against a sensitive young man named Rick and his live-in girlfriend, Elizabeth.

Partly due to strained relations with her children, Ouisa finds herself feeling emotionally attached to Paul, hoping to be able to help him in some way despite the fact that he has victimized them.

But to find the right six people.Kristin Griffith and Swoosie Kurtz read the role of Ouisa Kittredge in workshops in 1989 before Stockard Channing was cast.

Channing was originally unavailable and was committed to coming to Broadway in another play, Neil Simon's Jake's Women.

Channing had starred previously in John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves, and he offered her the role for the official Off-Broadway run.

The cast included The production was transferred to the Vivian Beaumont Theater for its Broadway debut on November 8, 1990.

[9] A 1995 production at Canadian Stage in Toronto, Ontario starred Fiona Reid as Ouisa, Jim Mezon as Flan and Nigel Shawn Williams as Paul.

The play was revived on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in a limited engagement opening on April 5, 2017, starring Allison Janney, John Benjamin Hickey and Corey Hawkins, with direction by Trip Cullman.

[12][13] The play was inspired by the real-life story of David Hampton, a con man and robber who managed to convince a number of people in the 1980s that he was the son of actor Sidney Poitier.

[14] Hampton was tried and acquitted for harassment of Guare after the play became a critical and financial success; he felt that, as the real life protagonist of the story, he was due a share of the profits that he ultimately never received.

There are some very overt references to it, as when the protagonist explains the thesis paper he has just written on The Catcher in The Rye[16] to the family who takes him in for the night.

[17] There are also more subtle allusions made both in the script and in the cinematography of the film version, such as when various characters begin to take on Holden Caulfield-esque characteristics and attitudes.