Sam Rockwell, Darren Criss, and Laurence Fishburne star in latest Broadway revival of David Mamet’s American Buffalo (photo by Richard Termine)
AMERICAN BUFFALO
Circle in the Square Theatre
1633 Broadway at 50th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 10, $79.50 – $299.50
americanbuffalonyc.com
In 1981, at the downtown Circle in the Square on Bleecker St., a high school classmate of mine named Rich and I saw David Mamet’s American Buffalo, a searing three-character drama starring Al Pacino, Clifton James, and Thomas G. Waites as a trio of luckless losers in a Chicago junk shop plotting a low-level heist. Last month, Rich and I saw the third Broadway revival of the play, at Circle in the Square in the Theater District, a still-sizzling play with another all-star cast: Sam Rockwell, Laurence Fishburne, and Darren Criss.
A lot has changed over the last forty-one years. Rich and I both moved out of Long Island; he is a married insurance defense lawyer in Queens with two kids, while I’m a married culture writer and managing editor in Manhattan. Mamet, for decades celebrated as one of the country’s most important and talented playwrights and filmmakers — he’s been nominated for two Oscars, three Emmys, and two Tonys and won the Pulitzer Prize for 1983’s Glengarry Glen Ross — has now been turned into a pariah by the left because of his Trumpist political views and condemnation of liberalism, which dates back to around 2011, along with the toxic masculinity and misogyny that appear throughout his work.
The last decade has witnessed a quartet of disasters by Mamet — the oh-so-brief Broadway debuts of The Anarchist and China Doll, an ill-fated revival of Glengarry Glen Ross, and the world premiere of the disappointing The Penitent — but all of that has little to do with Neil Pepe’s powerful new staging of American Buffalo; my only quibble is that the intermission gets in the way of the flow of the drama, which is only eighty-five minutes without the break. (Most of Mamet’s works are between sixty and one hundred minutes, so he certainly has a way of getting right to the point.)
Donny (Laurence Fishburne) gets an earful from Teach (Sam Rockwell) in American Buffalo (photo by Richard Termine)
American Buffalo takes place in an impossibly crowded downstairs junk shop. It’s a Friday morning, and middle-aged store owner Donny Dubrow (Laurence Fishburne) is talking with Bobby (Darren Criss), a young simpleton who helps him out on occasion. In this case, Donny has asked Bobby to keep watch on a guy who had come into the store and purchased a buffalo nickel from him for ninety bucks. Donny compares the stranger to their friend Fletcher, who just won a stash playing cards.
“You take him and you put him down in some strange town with just a nickel in his pocket, and by nightfall he’ll have that town by the balls,” Donny says. “This is not talk, Bob, this is action. . . . Skill. Skill and talent and the balls to arrive at your own conclusions.”
While Donny goes out of his way to teach Bobby about life, their friend Walter Cole (Sam Rockwell), better known as Teach, isn’t seeking out any teaching moments. He whirls into the shop, complaining about this and that, finding offense in minor incidents, lashing out with a slew of curses as he recounts supposed wrongs done to him. “Someone is against me, that’s their problem,” he barks. “I can look out for myself, and I don’t got to fuck around behind somebody’s back, I don’t like the way they’re treating me. Or pray some brick safe falls and hits them on the head, they’re walking down the street. But to have that shithead turn, in one breath, every fucking sweetroll that I ever ate with them into GROUND GLASS — I’m wondering were they eating it and thinking ‘This guy’s an idiot to blow a fucking quarter on his friends‘’ . . . this hurts me, Don. This hurts me in a way I don’t know what the fuck to do.” When Donny tries to calm him down, the bloviator says, “The only way to teach these people is to kill them.”
Amid a series of Pinteresque discussions, each more absurd than the last as they talk about English muffins, bacon, the weather, coffee, cheating at cards, pigirons, and loyalty, they plot a heist, deciding to rid the buffalo nickel customer of all of his coins later that night. What could possibly go wrong?
American Buffalo is a character-driven masterpiece about low-level dreams gone awry, about people who started with nothing and have no idea how to get their piece of the pie, or at least not legally. It’s field day for three actors; past productions have featured such trios as Robert Duvall, Kenneth McMillan, and John Savage; William H. Macy, Philip Baker Hall, and Mark Webber; John Leguizamo, Cedric the Entertainer, and Haley Joel Osment; and Damian Lewis, John Goodman, and Tom Sturridge.
Daren Criss holds his own with big-timers Sam Rockwell and Laurence Fishburne in Mamet revival (photo by Richard Termine)
The current Broadway revival, staunchly directed by Neil Pepe (Hands on a Hardbody, Dying for It), who has helmed many of Mamet’s works — including the 2000 revival at the Donmar Warehouse and the Atlantic Theater, which was cofounded by Mamet and Macy and where Pepe has been artistic director for thirty years — is another acting tour de force, with Criss (How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, Hedwig and the Angry Inch) sublime as the gentle Bobby, Fishburne (Two Trains Running, Riff Raff) steadfast as the straightforward Donny, and a mustachioed Rockwell (A Behanding in Spokane, Fool for Love) right on target as the unsettling, unpredictable Teach, his polyester slacks practically a character unto themselves. (The costumes are by Dede Ayite.)
Scott Pask’s set is like a character unto itself as well, consisting of hundreds of items cluttering the floor and filling the ceiling over the men’s heads; these pieces of junk are like parts of their brain, all the thoughts and desires swimming around their skulls, likely to never come to fruition, just taking up space in these ne’er-do-wells who can’t see clearly ahead of themselves.
Right before the show started, Rich reminded me that when he had taken a stab at acting and stand-up comedy after college, his go-to audition speech was from American Buffalo, Teach’s first words: “Fuckin’ Ruthie, fuckin’ Ruthie, fuckin’ Ruthie, fuckin’ Ruthie, fuckin’ Ruthie.” After experiencing the play with him again after four decades, that choice made perfect sense to me.