American Buffalo is a 1975 play by American playwright David Mamet which had its premiere in a showcase production at the

Goodman Theatre, Chicago. After two more showcase productions, it opened on Broadway on February 16, 1977. plays of the last decade."
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Critic Frank Rich called it "one of the best American

1 Plot 2 Style 3 Awards and nominations 4 Film adaptation 5 References 6 External links

[edit]Plot The play concerns a team of men, Don, Teach, Bob, and Fletcher (who does not appear in the play, but is referred to), who are conspiring to steal acoin collection from a wealthy man. Don, who owns a junk shop, sold a nickel to a man for much less than what it was worth. Out of revenge, he and his young gofer, Bob, plan to steal the man's coin collection after suspecting that he went away for the weekend. Teach, an experienced and misanthropic friend of Don's, persuades Don to release Bob from the job because of what Teach feels is inexperience and potential disloyalty, using himself and Fletcher in Bob's place. Right before the caper is going to be carried out later that night, Bob appears at the store and attempts to sell Don a rare nickel, similar to the one Don sold. When asked where he got the nickel, Bob is evasive. He explains Fletcher's absence by saying he was mugged and is now in a hospital, but when Don calls the hospital, Fletcher has not been admitted. Bob's excuse is that he didn't actually know which hospital Fletcher went to, but by this time Teach is sure that Bob is trying to trick them and in anger strikes him on the head with a metal object from the store. Shortly thereafter a call comes in from another friend of theirs corroborating the Fletcher story and naming the correct hospital, which Don calls and confirms. Don admonishes Teach for wounding Bob and orders him to get his car so they can take him to the hospital. [edit]Style As is emblematic of Mamet's writing style, the play's dialogue is sometimes terse and often vulgar. Teach uses the word "cunt" numerous times and both Don and Teach use the word "fuck" quite loosely. (By way of contrast, Bobby, younger and more vulnerable, only says "fuck" in situations of extreme duress: immediately after being beaten and his final apology to Donnie.) Mamet's profanity is not employed for shock value, but is rather an integral component of his characters' "profane poetry", which, according to frequent collaborator Gregory Mosher, "worked the iambic pentameter out of the

vernacular of the underclass."

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The characters' sometimes vulgar lexicon, moreover, may be seen as

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psychologically necessary armor against their brutal environment.

The parenthetical stage directions are straightforward and do not provide line readings

Thorstein Veblen wrote that business wisdom, when reduced to its basest form, frequently resorts to "the judicious use of sabotage"an idea that David Mamet explores in his American Buffalo. First performed in Chicago in 1975, the play made its way to Broadway in 1977. Although Mamet had already achieved some success with his Sexual Perversity in Chicago (1972) the response to American Buffalo was highly favorable, despite the occasional harsh review. Many critics applauded Mamet's ability to capture the cadences and ambiguities in everyday American speech: Newsweek's Jack Kroll, for example, remarked that "Mamet is someone to listen to. He's that rare bird, an American playwright who's a language playwright." Edwin Wilson, writing in the Wall Street Journal, stated that Mamet "has a keen ear for the idiosyncrasies and the humor of everyday speech." While some critics dismissed American Buffalo (like the New York Daily News's Douglas Watt) as "a poor excuse for a play" and (like the Christian Science Monitor's John Beaufort) "too superficial to waste time upon," most were enthusiastic about Mamet's look at the ways in which three petty crooks plan to steal a coin collection in the name of "good business." Mamet's plays (and this one is no exception) are radically different from ones written in previous theatrical eras and periods. Characters rarely speak in full sentences and their language (depending on the topic at hand) is often a mix of half-thoughts and obscenities, making the playsat timesdifficult to read. When performed, however, these seemingly inarticulate utterances yield a rhythm found in few other playwrights' work. "Part of the fascination of the play," wrote Women's Wear Daily's Howard Kissel, lies in "noting how the same banal language takes on different colors as we perceive the changing relationships" between the characters. The conflict explored by Mamet here is the clash between business and friendshipbetween a man's ethics and desire to succeed in a world where so much of the population has subscribed to a shared myth of capitalism. As one character tells his younger friend, "there's business and there's friendship" two worlds which will be combined and then torn apart by the time the play is finished.

A classic tragedy, American Buffalo is a story of three men struggling in the pursuit of their distorted vision of the American Dream. By turns touching and cynical, poignant and violent, American Buffalo is a piercing story of how people can be corrupted into betraying their ideals and those they love.

A synopsis, history, reviews and criticism of the play by David Mamet PLOT SYNOPSIS In David Mamet's American Buffalo, a coin collector stumbles across a valuable buffalo nickel in a small Chicago junk shop and purchases it for only $90. Later coming to believe that the coin was worth far more than this and feeling he has been unfairly taken advantage of, Don, the shop owner, becomes determined to steal the coin back. He elicits help from Bobby, a young friend, and Teach, a paranoid and violent braggart. The three conspirators fancy themselves as businessmen pursuing the legitimate concerns of free enterprise. In reality, however, they are merely small time crooks, and all of their plotting amounts to nothing in the end. It is a futile, vulgar, verbal exercise that finally erupts in violence when their failure becomes apparent and the frustration becomes unbearable. After choosing Bobby to carry out the actual robbery, Don and Teach later conspire to cut him out of the deal and split the money between themselves. Eventually, Bobby returns, not with the buffalo nickel, but with a buffalo nickel--one that he finally admits he simply purchased being unable to carry out the robbery. Don is embarrassed and angry, but Teach is furious and, suspecting BOBBY is somehow trying to con them, explodes in a vicious attack on the helpless boy which leaves him in need of medical attention. The would-be thieves have been exposed not only for their entrepreneurial greed but for their complete inadequacy to carry out even a simple robbery.

In American Buffalo, the characters express themselves in the debris of our language: words and sentences have become eroded.... If the play finally achieves eloquence it is through the inarticulate. No ideas or statements are ever completed, conversation is chiefly carried on in a series of muddled or explosive ejaculations. One often doubts whether the characters themselves know what they want to say. Hardly anything is fulfilled. There is something about the characters and their values as effaced as the American buffalo in the old coins. We perceive only their lineaments. HAROLD CLURMAN, introduction, Nine Plays of the Modern Theater David Mamet brings you to the edge of your seat with language. Not just the force of it, but the cunning deployment of everyday American speech patterns that cut corners and pure grammar to distill hard meaning and veiled threats from the frenzied banter of a trio of articulate burglars in a downtown junk shop. Hearing Pinter for the first time must have been something like this. MICHAEL COVENEY, Financial Times, Jun. 29, 1978 The obscenities as well as the more homely exchanges compose a litany of the underworld, and Mamet has caught the tone precisely, knowing full well that the trio's words and actions are a form of prayer of the dispossessed.

DOUGLAS WATT, New York Daily News, Jun. 5, 1981 Like some bastard offspring of Oswald Spengler and Elaine May, American Buffalopopped out, full grown, as the American drama's funniest, most vicious attack on the ethos of Big Business and the price that it exacts upon the human soul. GREGORY MOSHER, introduction, American Buffalo American Buffalo is a play that is essentially concerned with language rather than deed, and Mamet advances the action almost entirely through that medium. Because of this concentration on the power of language rather than upon overt stage action, some critics have denounced the play as tedious and static.... Many of Mamet's plays have been criticized for their stasis or lack of plot, but they nonetheless remain powerfully dramatic. ANNE DEAN, David Mamet: Language as Dramatic Action The play's ostensible simplicity ... expands into a parodic version of the American dream, a social drama, and a metaphysical work of surprising complexity and genuine originality. With its echoes of another America, uncontaminated by entreprenurial greed, a product of utopian rhetoric rather than psychotic fear and aggression, American Buffalooffers a portrait of the Republic in terminal decay, its communal endeavor and individual resilience all but disappeared. The trust and unity invoked on its coinage have now devolved into paranoia, the security and hope it once offered into a frightening violence. MATTHEW ROUDAN, The Cambridge Companion to David Mamet These three failed crooks are the waste products of the American belief in free enterprise. But while Mamet shows them as victims, it is without patronage and with respect and even love for these little people who, as he somehow makes one feel, resemble the little person in all of us. VICTORIA RADIN, London Observer, Aug. 5, 1984 In American Buffalo the quarrelsome solidarity of petty criminals is acted out in the mode of a most convincing psychological realism, thanks not least to a masterful deployment of authentically fragmented dialogue; but the author has proclaimed that he had in mind nothing less than a general indictment of American business ethics, and when read or seen in this light the play, right from its title, does give evidence of this. HERBERT GRABES, New Essays on American Drama By the time American Buffalo is over, it ... has pounded away at the American dream of success until it is left in soiled, hideous tatters. FRANK RICH, New York Times, Jun. 5, 1981 American Buffalo is about an essential part of American consciousness, which is the ability to suspend an ethical sense and adopt in its stead a popular accepted mythology and use that to assuage your conscience like everyone else is doing. DAVID MAMET, London Times, Jun. 19, 1978 Back to David Mamet

America as a Junk Shop

by Carey Harrison

David Mamets classic 1975 play, American Buffalo, comes to the mid-Hudson Valley this weekend and the following one, with performances on both sides of the river: The Woodstock Players, a company whose productions have won acclaim since their inception in 2009, are performing Mamets mesmerizing drama at the Center for Performing Arts in Rhinebeck on Friday January 6th and Saturday 7th at 8 p.m., with a 3 pm matine on Sunday January 8, and again in Woodstock at Byrdcliffes Kleinert/James Arts Center, which is hosting an evening performance at 7:30 pm on Saturday January 14th and a 3:00 matine on Sunday 15th. American Buffalo touches us with the sheer blinding inadequacy of the characters longings. American Buffalo, Mamets first play, remains his most cohesive work, and his least forced. The setting, a struggling junk shop, evokes America, and life itself, in ways that no amount of penetrating speeches could achieve: Whats this? one character asks of a mysterious object hanging on the wall. That? Its a thing they stick in dead pigs, keep the legs apart, let all the blood run out, comes the answer. The world in a nutshell.

L: Carey Harrison as Don Dubrow, R: Alex Bennett as Bobby photo by Claire Lambe

The play tracks the planning of a robbery by a trio of urban lowlifes whose collective brainpower could not be confidently expected to order lunch, let alone burglarize a coin collectors residence. Their stumbling, furious language is the plays manifest glory, an argot which is at one and the same time the most vulgar dialog in Mamets canon (tender souls, be warned) and its most poetic achievement. Astonishingly, the entire play is composed in iambic verse, broken into sawn-off, rambling and syntactically bizarre utterances which on the page resemble pentameters about as much as a charging warthog resembles a springing gazelle. And yet: listen, and you will hear the dance inside the thunder. the iamb, far from being a Shakespearean accessory, underlies spoken English and has found its way into written English by natural distillation The exquisite care with which the characters speech has been pared into iambic rhythms reveals how much the iamb, far from being a Shakespearean accessory, underlies spoken English and has found its way into written English by natural distillation. (Compare the anapaests of the French Alexandrine with their progenitors in French word-formation.) English-speakers tend towards iambics, regardless of education. Its in the language, both high-flown and profane. Mamet exposes and exploits this to the full, and in American Buffalo this fascination with how his characters speak occupies him so thoroughly that language itself anchors the play to reality: neither the interplay of ideasrarely Mamets surest ground nor a lurch into melodrama, another Mamet vice, distort the truth to life of Mamets first and most satisfying work. Of his subsequent plays, Glengarry Glen Ross comes closest to the Chekhovian quality of American Buffalo, while the remainder of Mamets output more closely resembles Ibsen in its laboring towards a moralizing significance. In Glengarry Glen Ross the most memorable riffs belong to star realtor Ricky Roma, whose hypnotic sales pitches entrap their prey via confessional monologues. These mazy speeches, woven out of misogyny, self-abasement and visionary snatches of the all-empowering American Dream, derive from their originator: Walter Teach Cole, the two-bit gangster manqu[E] who dominates American Buffalo and has provided both Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman with one of their meatiest roles, on stage and screen respectively. But where the realtors in Glengarry Glen Ross thrust into our faces the exploitativeness of their dreams of wealth, American Buffalo touches us with the sheer blinding inadequacy of the characters longings. Don, the owner of the Resale junk shop, has sold a rare buffalo-head nickel for $90in 1975 a sizeable killing. But the sale brings him only a sense of shame that he has once more been outwitted by life: He would of gone five times that! Don declares of the well-to-do purchaser who noticed the nickel in Dons pile of cheap coins. Embarking on a plan to rob the purchaser of his supposed collection, all Don cares about is the symbolic revenge he will effect by recovering the nickel he sold: No, I know, its only a fucking nickel, Don insists to his exasperated partner in would-be crime, but what Im saying is I only want it back. Life has defrauded him, left him beached in a treacherous world of thieves and gamblers, and although Don preaches the gospel of friendship as a valueor else the rest is garbage, as

Don warns his young gofer, Bobbythat will save him from the slime of business, Don finds himself facing a choice between loyalty and greed which tests his belief in friendship to its limits. Like Glengarry Glen Ross, American Buffalo is a tale set among American males whose brutal values Mamet lays bare with a terrible, confessional vividness. Its climax is alone in Mamets work(with the exception of the final scene of Edmund between the eponymous protagonist, frail and white, and his prison cellmate, buff and black, the embodiment of everything Edmund ever feared and hated, and now his gentle, paternal protector and sexual partner)in granting us glimpses of sweetness in this barren spiritual jail. American Buffalo is the most touching, the most tender, and the most savage of Mamets plays, earning it a justified place as the most resonant American drama of the past 35 years.

Winner! 1977 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, Best American Play "Gripping drama" - The New York Times "Mamet is an actor's playwright... [He] senses the possibilities inarticulateness affords a savvy actor." - Women's Wea

Setting: The entirety of Mamets play is set inside Dons resale shop. The play begins in the junk shop

midmorning. All of the

plays dialogue occurs within the shop,

while almost every piece of action (be it getting coffee etc) occurs outside of the shop. The shop serves as the centre of the characters plan much the same way that Don himself is the apparent coordinator and overwatcher of the operation. From the outset of the play, it is likely clear to the audience (and readers for that matter), that they will not see the execution of the plan, or perhaps that it will never transpire. Characters:

Don: Don appears to be the most competent of the three characters on stage. His position as owner of the junk shop gives him a degree of authority over both Bob and Teach. Clearly, however, based upon his occupation and his mannerisms, he is of the same walk of life as Teach. From the very outset of the play, Don acts as a parental figure to the young and inexperienced Bob. In fact, the opening of the pay sees Bob apologizing for a mistake he made, to which Don says he is not mad. Rather, Don expresses his hope that Bob has learned from the experience, so that he will not make it twice. Furthermore, Don seems genuinely concerned with Bobs health: Never skip breakfast, Bob. Furthermore, he even promises to buy vitamins for Bob, who cannot afford them. Don seems to revere Fletcher, a character who never takes to the stage and is only mentioned as one of the men on the job. While chiding Bob on his mistakes, Don uses Fletcher as an example of a stand-up guy who can do almost anything, and has come to do so through learning by action, as Action talks and bullshit walks. Teach: Teachs initial entrance to the stage marks a staunch shift in tone. Just as Bob and Don are finished talking about eating healthily, Teach enters and says Fuckin Ruthie, Fuckin Ruthie, Fuckin Ruthie, Fuckin Ruthie, Fuckin Ruthie. From this point, Don and Teach disregard Bob while they converse about Grace and Ruthie. Teach dominates the dialogue immediately after his entrance, making clear his dominant personality among the three characters. It is also clear that Teach has strong opinions and is aggressive, as seen in his statement that They treat me like an asshole, they are an asshole[Pause]The only way to teach these people is to kill them. One interesting tendency of Teachs is to talk to Don about Bob, while Bob is clearly within earshot onstage. This is initially evident early on: Teach: And tell him he shouldnt say anything to Ruthie Don: He wont. Teach: No youre right, Im sorry Bob. Teach acts with the bravado of a confident thief, when in reality he in fact has little clue of what to do. This is seen during Act I when he is planning the robbery. Teach insists that he knows what is valuable and what to take. He pressures Don to leave Bob on the outside of the operation: Fifty percent of some money is better than ninety percent of some broken toaster that youre gonna have, you send the kid in. He also preaches Knowing what the fuck youre talking about. However, readers soon realize that Don, and Teach especially, do not know the value of anything worth stealing, or for that matter, even have a plan of how to enter the house. When posed with the suggestion to read up on the value of coins to steal, Teach replies annoyed: Naaa, fuck the book. What am I going to do, leaf through the book for hours on end? Te important thing is to have an idea.

Rather ironically, He constantly instructs the others in the ways that business is conducted: A guy can be too loyal, Dont confuse business with pleasure, Its kickass or kissass, and You got to have a feeling for your subject are a few of the many rules he recites during the play. Teach subscribes to the notion that free enterprise is The freedom of the Individual to Embark on Any Fucking Course that he sees fit. Bob: Bob is Dons gopher and serves him in the dual capacities of coffee-fetcher and surrogate son. While he does listen patiently to all of Dons lessons on how to do business, the audience also learns that he frequently borrows money from him to support a drug habit. Slow-witted and dull, he is not as talkative nor excitable as Don or Teach, but he does remain faithful to Don, even after he is assaulted by Teach on the grounds that he has betrayed their robbery scheme to other thieves. If we assume that the accusations against Bob were in fact false, then Bob is the only character who remains loyal to the others. He is not the least Machiavellian or pragmatic, either due to a gentle nature or a lower intelligence than the others. Themes: Business: In American Buffalo, business is recurring theme. The low-life characters often act in a Machiavellian manner in pursuit of money through business. An example given early on details of a business deal where Fletcher jewed Ruthie out of some pig iron. Bob is under the impression that Ruthie was mad at Fletcher because he stole it. However, as Don explains she was angry, but simply because of the nature of the business deal, likely one that was very good for Fletcher only. Don explains The fact remains that it was business. Thats what business is. In the play, due to the financial situation of the characters, they seem to be willing to do nearly anything in order to get by. Don describes business as people taking care of themselves. He further elaborates that theres business and theres friendship, Bobby. He summarizes the maxim soon after Theres lotsa people on this street, Bob, they want this and they want that. Do anything to get it. You dont have friends this life Clearly, from the outset of the play it is clear that an keeping an aggressive eye out for oneself is essential to getting by. Don faces a dilemma in the play, of whether to remain loyal in his promise to Bob, or to pursue a more Business centred method, involving the more professional Fletcher. Teach applies pressure to Don in Act I in order to make this happen. Loyalty Loyalty is another major theme present in American Buffalo. It acts as a somewhat countervailing force to that of business. The plays strongest loyalty is the clearly caring relationship between Bob and Don, who acts as a mentor of sorts. Bobs running of errands, such as getting coffee at the Riverside re-enforce the idea that he is loyal to Don, out of respect and gratitude. There is a clear sense that Bob listens to every word that Don has to say. This may be related to the fact that Don is a

[perhaps] somewhat successful business owner. Therefore, his loyalty may draw from a desire to emulate Don. If Bob exemplifies loyalty in the play, then Teach represents his treacherous, Machiavellian antithesis. Teach does exhibit loyalty to Don, but it is not clear if this emerges from a friendship, or merely as a business venture. Early in the play, Teach expresses his opinion of business and friendship: Lets just keep the two apart, and maybe we can deal with each other like human beings. Teach implores this maxim when he persuades Don to not send Bob in on the job, arguing that Bob is just a kid who had no experience, and is only there because of Dons loyalty to him. As we find out, Don maintains a loyalty to Bob, despite the fact that Bob is a recovering heroin addict. In fact, he dislikes the mention of it I dont want you mentioning that. Friendship At the opening of American Buffalo, Don is lecturing Bob on the importance of committing himself to the business deal they have made; Bob is supposed to be watching the target of their robbery but has instead returned to the junk shop. Don tells him, Action counts. Action talks and bullshit walks. After Bob apologizes, Don protests, Dont tell me youre sorry, Im not mad at you. What the audience learns from this remark is that Don is genuinely interested in helping Bob become more astute in the ways of their own brand of business. He tells him that he should model himself after Fletcher, a standup guy and card shark who had to learn all he knows about becoming a success. Don impresses upon Bob the importance of attitude and intelligence when confronting the business world: Everything, Bobby: its going to happen to you, its not going to happen to you, the important thing is can you deal with it, and can you learn from it. Dons father-figure interest in Bob is implied through the advice he offers him on a number of topics. When he sends Bob to the diner to get coffee, he insists that he buy something for himself, since Breakfast is the most important meal of the day; later, he urges Bob to take vitamins. His most important lesson, however, is what he tells Bob about friendship: Theres lotsa people on this street, Bob, they want this and they want that. Do anything to get it. You dont have friends this life The implied end of this sentenceis worth nothingreveals the high value Don places on friendship and people protecting each other from what he calls the garbage of the world. As the play proceeds, Bob is revealed to be a drug addict, frequently asking Don for money to support his habitwhich Don lends him, preferring not to press him for explanations. By the end of the play, however, Don forsakes his friendship with Bob in the name of businessan action which causes him a great deal of shame, since he knows he has failed to follow his own advice. The last scene of the play shows their relationship being rebuilt and Don trying to make amends for his doubting the strength of Bobs devotion. Like Don, Teach seems to hold up friendship as an absolute good. He enters the play cursing Ruthie, a mutual friend, for making a joke when he took a piece of toast off her plate at the diner. Her remark of Help yourself causes Teach to rage at her for forgetting all the times he has picked up the check: he tells Don, All I ever ask (and I would say this to her face) is only she remembers who is who and

not to go around with her or Gracie either with this attitude. The Past is Past, and this is Now, and so Fuck You. Ruthies remark has hurt Teach because she has not lived up to the code of friendship that he assumes he embodies. However, when Teach sees the chance to make real classical money in Dons robbery scheme, he immediately tries to talk Don into dismissing Bob. Hiding his avarice under the guise of good business, Teach convinces Don that Bob, although Dons friend, is not a good candidate for such an operation: A guy can be too loyal, Don. Dont be dense on this. What are we saying here? Business. When Don does remove Bob from the plan and their plot begins to turn awry, Teach suggests that Bob has betrayed thema false implication which, nonetheless, is believed by Don until the final scene of the play, when he realizes that it is he who has betrayed Bob in the name of good business. Success and Failure Don and Teach are small-time gamblers and thieves who constantly spout aphorisms that they think attest to their business savvy: Things are not always what they seem to be, You got to keep clear who your friends are, Dont confuse business with pleasure and You got to trust your instincts are only a few of their many saws. Don lectures Bob on good business and Teach tells Don that he should exclude Bob from the robbery because as a business proposition he cannot afford to have someone with his lack of experience break into a house. Anyone watching the play, however, can see that their theory does not convert into practice. The viewer learns that a poker game took place last night in the shop, where Don did allright (very likely a euphemism) and Teach ended the game Not too good. When the game is discussed, Teach attributes his loss not to his own lack of skill but to Ruthies cheating: She is not a good cardplayer, Teach asserts, because her partner is always going to walk around, presumably to glance at everyones cards. (Teach later claims that Fletcher, last nights winner, cheats as well.) When Teach uses a collectors guide to quiz Don on what coins they should steal from their future victims collection, Don shows his ignorance in this field by guessing that a certain coin is worth $18.60 instead of its actual worth of twenty cents. Later, when Teach tries to call the collectors house to be sure he is not home, he keeps transposing parts of the phone number

American Buffalo, David Mamets breakthrough play currently in an excellent revival at the Belasco Theater, may be a better source of explanation for the current economic crisis than you can get from any economist. Every exchange in the play has business on the mind; in the world of Donny, Teach, and Bobby, even friendship breaks down into business. The overwhelming

sense of mistrust among these closest buds ultimately results in disaster on both the business and personal level. American Buffalo is a tragicomedy, but all the plays comedy comes from the humanizing effect of the word fuck. All the plays tragedy results from the perils of the phrase I dont know. On the television show You Cant Do That On Television, uttering the phrase "I don't know" got you slimed. In the world of the petty Chicago crooks of American Buffalo, which could also be called You Cant Do That in Business, uttering the phrase will get a gun pulled on you, or worse. Forget your economics textbook; try messing with Teach with a porous economy of information.

Ill admit that when the cast of American Buffalo was announced, I was a bit frustrated. Not so much about the stunt casting of Hollywood stars who fit the roles but had no theatrical experience. I was more upset by the missed opportunity to see the poetic beauty of grizzly old white men on Broadway, a thrill that few but Mamet can provide anymore (where have you gone, Lawrence Tierney?). But was the highly anticipated Broadway revival of arguably Mamets greatest play ill equipped for the task? Fuck you, this is David Fucking Mamet were talking about. Everyone involved in this production knows that this is too good of an opportunity to mess up, and though things are played relatively safe, everyone holds his own. Things are kept tight thanks to the direction of Robert Falls, a sensible director who, as the current Artistic Director of Mamets own Goodman Theatre in Chicago, was the only sensible pick for the job.

David Mamet is not a bulletproof playwright. Performed poorly, his dialogue limps along like a slow, sick dog. I've seen Mamet plays where the actors were embarrassed to have his words in their mouths, spitting them out like a bad taste. Done well, Mamet is a pit-bull: goofy looking and scary as hell. And the Fend Players production of American Buffalo does Mamet very well indeed. American Buffalo is a funny play. It doesn't overflow with jokes, but develops sustained humour from the rhythm of the dialogue, a rolling punch line that builds for an hour and a half. It's hard to nail down. Imagine someone who doesn't

understand English listening to Lenny Bruce on a riff. They can't get the jokes, yet for some reason they fall over laughing. Delivery, pace, inflection, style carry the humour. And when the comedy dissolves into violence there's no safe emotional ground to retreat to. The play centres on three small-time crooks. How small? The object of their loopy schemes is a lowly nickel. A rare and valuable nickel -- maybe -- but still just a nickel. These guys are nickel-and-dimers, minus the dimes. But when you're far enough down penny-ante stakes are desperate stuff. Don (played by Alec Willows) runs a junk shop. Teach (Stephen Dimopoulos) is his thuggish friend, and Bobby (Benjamin Ratner) is a hype who runs errands for Don. Don and Teach are hyper-verbal lowlifes, if a bit dimwitted. Teach particularly is one of those people who has difficulty thinking unless he's talking, and an even harder time talking unless he's moving. Dimopoulos and Willows can rarely be caught acting; they inhabit these characters, live in their skins. Mamet's obscene poetry sparks in their mouths like firecrackers. Ratner's slo-mo junkie rhythms are a perfect counterpoint, the syncopating element that keeps the play's dynamics from going stale. American Buffalo operates on pure high-octane testosterone. Machismo is an insufficient word to describe it. We need a new noun: mametismo. Mamet builds his play out of male stereotypes: cards, banter, sexual bragging, rituals of business and violence. He goes far beyond easy mockery to unlock deeper levels of meaning and emotion that have made these things such enduring clichs. Women only exist off-stage in this play, as in much of Mamet's work. Don't expect equal opportunity here. At one point, Teach calls an off-stage character a "dyke cocksucker." It's a useful quote for a taste-test, and if you find that line as funny as I do, you should definitely see this production. Yes, Mamet is a very male-oriented playwright, but he makes a virtue of his chauvinism by tearing apart his male characters with unfailing honesty and affection. Even when these people act like amoral monsters, they are never allowed to be other than human, never beyond understanding. The American buffalo is an archetypal symbol of profit pursued to extinction. The conflicts in the play -- friendship and business, loyalty and greed -- are easily scaled up to read as a parable of American business practice. But these are afterthoughts -- the performance allows no space for such frills. It drags you into the moment and doesn't let you pull away. The play is a sensual experience; analysis can wait until later. Mamet is a naturalist, and the wonder of his work is the words can sound so true and still be so entertaining. Credit goes to Paul Crepeau for carrying the naturalism through, even though that choice can only have the effect of disguising his work as

director. The set is detailed down to the insulating newspaper stuffed between the cut-away walls of the shop, while the lighting is restrained, with the lights themselves hidden in the clutter of junk hanging from the ceiling. The intimate seating at Station Street permits the actors -- Ratner in particular -- to work at a scale that is sometimes remarkably subtle. This absence of theatrical overkill creates a truly absorbing production. A last happy coincidence is the Station Street theatre itself, located just outside the downscale downtown heart of Vancouver. The junkshop set could open for business and fit in seamlessly with the rest of the neighbourhood. You can even go across the street after the show for a beer with the bikers at the Old American Hotel. Just don't expect them to be as real as the actors on stage.