American Buffalo
David Mamet's terse, mean street drama has been praised for its realism. His dialogue cuts to the marrow. His three characters don't speak their minds so much as externalize their nerves. The play's realistic, but only on the surface. Buffalo grows progressively surreal. As Don, Teach, and young Bob plan to steal a coin collection, the play transforms into an inertia-dream where everyone's knee-deep in murk and one step forward yanks them two back. Donny and Teach speak a fragmented language that's also mud-stuck (their goal is "the thing"), and in act 2, if they weren't planning theft and possibly murder, you'd swear they were Abbott and Costello asking "Who's on first?" Buffalo's been staged across the spectrum, from low comedy to junk-shop noir. For Compass Theatre, director Ruff Yeager wisely sticks to the present moment and lets the humor fall where it may. I caught a preview and, even with some rough spots, it had a stark, improvisational feel: Donny, Teach, and Bob plot, and compose Mamet's play, inch by inch as they go along. Chad Jaeger packs his set, Don's basement-level junk shop, with rows of secondhand items. The set's realistic in great detail but looks too orderly for such a chaotic scene. Matt Scott had Teach's paranoia down, and his need for human contact, but went over the top vocally for his outbursts. As Bob, Don's gopher/protégé (and the only one who makes any money in the play), Nathan Dean Snyder's eyes, like a young dog's, searched for security in others'. Walter Murray's father Don provided a veneer of stability, though underneath he's trapped in a vertiginous world where business is war by other means and value has become destabilized.
Worth a try.
When
Ongoing until Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Hours
| Sundays, 2pm |
| Thursdays, 8pm |
| Fridays, 8pm |
| Saturdays, 4pm & 8pm |