American Buffalo

Last night I saw a production of David Mamet's American Buffalo at McCarter Theater. The play, written in 1975, is something of a landmark of American drama, and coupled with his Glengarry Glen Ross, is one of the most withering looks at the American capitalist system.

The play is set in a junk shop in Chicago. The owner is Don, who appears to an upright businessman. He looks over a pathetic young man, Bobby, who is perhaps a recovering junkie, and clearly does not possess all his faculties. They are joined by Teach, an obstreperous associate of Don's. They chat aimlessly, liberally using the kind of profanity that is typical of Mamet.

Eventually Teach learns that Don is planning something, and we realize that these guys are not on the up-and-up. Don feels he was swindled when he sold a buffalo nickel that was probably worth far more than he got for it, and plans on stealing it back, plus the man's entire coin collection. Teach, sensing a score, talks him out of him using the addled Bobby, and himself instead. Don insists on adding another man, not trusting Teach's breaking-and-entering skills (there's a beautifully weird sequence about how Teach will find the combination of a safe, if there is a safe).

Act I is the planning of the heist, and Act II is later that night, when things start to go wrong. The extra man has not shown, and Teach is late. Tempers flare, and a key bit of information that Bobby gave them turns out not to be true. Everything changes between them.

At first glance this play seems to be slight--it's a brisk ninety minutes, and in the end nothing really happens. This play is about business--the pursuit and acquistion of wealth. That it happens to be by men who are not that bright and criminal seems to be the point. At one point Teach declares, "I am businessman!" Also, a play about a burglary written in 1975 can't help but be a reflection of the Watergate scandal.

The three actors are good. Playwright Tracy Letts (who wrote the brilliant August: Osage County) is Teach, and he's a constrast to the most famous actors who have played the part--Al Pacino on Broadway and Dustin Hoffman in the film version. Letts is far more ruddy and beefy, balding but wearing his minimal hair in a grungy pony-tail. He has a gift for gab but really doesn't know what he's talking about--there's a great line when he says that knowing what you're talking about is everything. Kurt Ehrmann was Don, who was great (he was the understudy), a man with one foot in the respectable world of the shopkeeper, but another in the criminal element. And Patrick Andrews was Bobby, who managed to be both a shell of a man but also able to maintain his self-respect and dignity.

The play was directed by Amy Morton, a member of Steppenwolf (the source of this production) and an actor who was in August: Osage County (she also played George Clooney's sister in Up in the Air). The pacing is terrific, and I was heartened to see that my sight-line was okay, even though I was on extreme stage right. Great credit is also due to the set designer, Kevin Depinet, for assembling a junk shop of epic proportions. It's packed to the brim with stuff (even including an old copy of Playboy that I happen to know was the right time period). The set has to be flexible enough, as late in the play comes along one of my all-time favorite stage directions: "Teach destroys shop." So much action stemming from three simple words.