Word: buffalo
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...worthy theatrical venture merits sincere wishes for success, but the Off-Broadway Theatre may not get much of a chance to show its stuff if it doesn't come up with better material than American Buffalo, the David Mamet play of several years ago chosen as its first production. These days, Mamet is a playwright of some note. His talent seems to have matured--his A Life in the Theatre, currently running at the real off-Broadway, in Greenwich Village, is a marvelous work, full of wit and the kind of charm only a developed writer can muster. But American...
...American Buffalo is not a total loss, of course; Mamet is too talented for that to be the case, and director Tom Bloom squeezes everything he can out of the book, turning out a solid first act. The action--or lack thereof--takes place in a secondhand shop in a city, later revealed as Chicago in a passing reference. Three characters complete the cast, and everything transpires in the shop itself, elaborately designed and filled with junk props. The Off-Broadway's technical crew must be a good one, with careful attention paid to minute details like the drab, industrial...
What little action there is concerns Donny's attempt, masterminded by Teach, to steal a valuable buffalo-head nickel he sold to a customer several days before, unaware of the coin's worth. Teach plans the crime, infecting Donny with his enthusiasm and such telling logic as "You make your own right and wrong...so you know what I'm talking about here, huh?" Finally, Teach and Donny plan the caper, and Bobby is replaced by an absent friend named Fletch, at Teach's insistence...
...American Buffalo is a baffling play, and not a very good one, either. If Mamet meant to sketch the mean materialism inspired among the lower fringes of a capitalist society, he could have succeeded. But his play stretches for some deeper meaning, and in reaching for that goal topples over, incomplete. It's a shame to waste three fine performances on such a strange play. But the general strength of the production, if not of the play itself, is encouraging, and it is good to see an energetic young professional company set up shop in Cambridge...
...Kansas City 108, Buffalo...