Theater Review (NYC): American Buffalo by David Mamet
This review was originally published on Blogcritics.
American Buffalo, David Mamet’s 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 play’s comedy comes from the humanizing effect of the word “fuck.” All the play’s tragedy results from the perils of the phrase “I don’t know.” On the television show You Can’t 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 Can’t 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.
I’ll 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 Mamet’s greatest play ill equipped for the task? Fuck you, this is David Fucking Mamet we’re 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 Mamet’s own Goodman Theatre in Chicago, was the only sensible pick for the job.
Keeping things in line is no small task with any Mamet play, but especially with American Buffalo, which may be the tightest, most definitive Mamet play, even now, over 30 years and 20 plays later. Every beat is concentrated into three actors, any of whom can throw the play off the rails at any time with a single stumble. The demand for that kind of precision is why, despite the star power of John Leguizamo, Cedric the Entertainer, and Haley Joel Osment, the real star of this production of American Buffalo is Mamet himself. That emphasis is portended by a pre-show reminder on behalf of Mamet to “turn off your fucking cell phones,” the most effective strategy I’ve seen yet. In terms of the star power, I predict that even those complete theater novices who come merely for the celebrity factor of the actors will leave the theater thinking “this Mamet guy is pretty good.”
Leguizamo, the biggest stage star of the production, is given the most free reign by Falls, in a role that Leguizamo not surprisingly nails. Teach’s mix of cockiness, explosiveness, and thinly-veiled vulnerability are all motifs that Leguizamo has explored extensively on stage in the past. The dialogue in his one-man shows may as well have been Mamet's. My only complaint was the drug-dealer costume Leguizamo was given. Cedric the Entertainer, whose best roles have been as paternalistic, straight-talking sidekicks, translates his onscreen persona naturally to the stage. Save for a couple of hammy moments, Cedric makes for a nearly flawless Donny.
The real X-factor is Haley Joel Osment as the hard-edged but incompetent Bobby. Osment, whose starry-eyed image and acting chops staked his name in films like The Sixth Sense and A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, had become tainted in recent years with tales of teenage drunken escapades. Here, Osment reinvents himself from the preppy, puppy-eyed kid to the slummy, hard-talking young ingrate, and the transition is surprisingly successful. Some of Bobby’s naïvete mirrors past Osment roles, which helps ease the actor into the role. While it’s not a perfect transition, Osment does more good work here than most would have expected (included wisely deciding to keep facial hair for the role).
Any discussion of Mamet’s legacy can no longer avoid the laissez-faire conservatism and resentment of the left that Mamet recently espoused in his controversial Village Voice piece “Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal’” back in March. At that time, especially following the lack of sophistication in his latest Broadway smash November, it was becoming popular to dismiss Mamet’s importance. Sure enough, Mamet followed that piece with Redbelt, arguably his best movie of the last fifteen years, and he is now seeing two of his classic plays get Broadway revivals.
American Buffalo by David Mamet. Directed by Robert Falls; Set and Costumes by Santo Loquasto; lighting by Brian MacDevitt. Photos by Carol Rosegg.
Starring John Leguizamo (Teach), Cedric The Entertainer (Donny), and Haley Joel Osment (Bobby).
American Buffalo is being performed at the Belasco Theater, 111 W. 44th Street. Tickets can be purchased at telecharge.com.
Labels: 2008-2009, american buffalo, Broadway theatre, Cedric The Entertainer, david mamet, haley joel osment, John Leguizamo, new york, theater review
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The basic weaknesses of the script speak to nothing of the problems of the play’s premise. As We Speak is a present-day adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel It Can’t Happen Here, which imagined a dystopian fascist America. The novel was written in 1935, a time when major world democracies were falling into totalitarianism with terrifying frequency. It seemed that the fundamental viability of democracy was breaking down, a concept that was also addressed by Brave New World, 1984, and even Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
Bray, however, tries to update the premise to Dick Cheney’s America, post-9/11 and post-Katrina. Bray could be forgiven for the bad timing of the play, coming after an election that trounced fear-based conservative politics, had he dealt with those fears in any sort of interesting way. But Bray treats a fascist American uprising as a narrative inevitability that ultimately make the play simply boring. At the production I saw, not a single audience member clapped at intermission. I can assure you that was not due to awe.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=f8e5ec70-27ea-4e44-a5f1-437e3a76b1fa)
It's important to remember that Mormon hatred of gays is not just homophobia: it’s an increasingly crucial part of an all-encompassing theology, a theology that is, to its adherents, perfect and infallible. Yet that theology stands in direct conflict with human biology, an all-encompassing system of beliefs in its own right. In New York, of course, the latter point of view dominates.
But while these initial scenes may kill the play’s early momentum by telling rather than showing, they do succeed in getting you into Henry Mathis’ mindset. In the middle and later sections, when Henry actively confronts his demons, the nuances of his struggle become immediately clear. The yeoman work of the early scenes pays dividends when Henry meets with Bishop Robert Rhodes (Warren Katz), whose own sexuality is made somewhat ambiguous. ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=e53957c3-fde5-4bbb-a2a4-7c0f05a0a83c)
The problem that keeps Harm’s Way from reaching the heights I fully believe it capable of achieving is a lackluster production from Circus Theatricals. I was surprised by just how uninspired the cast seemed to be, especially since their credentials far exceeded the average for off-off-
As the tough war journalist Connie, ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=d5365904-a0d9-4caa-a44b-c848a83dc0fa)
Lest you think by the title that Daisey is at Joe’s Pub just to carelessly rant about having to take his shoes off at the airport, If You See Something Say Something spans the Cold War, World War II, the founding fathers, and present-day Los Alamos. Modern homeland security concerns make up a relatively small fraction of the play. Daisey’s main target is the military-industrial complex; his thesis states that “if you keep a standing army, and it doesn’t do anything, it will find something to do,” a statement he repeats twice, first in reference to Eisenhower, then to Washington, DC. When the military, government, and corporate sectors converge, Daisey doesn’t just see a rise in paranoia: he sees a systematic manipulation of human weakness to get everyone to conform to a system that ultimately benefits no one.
Daisey is smart enough not to detach himself from the situation. He spends much time talking about his childhood fascination with Los Alamos, the Bomb, and the cleansing power of Total Destruction. Always willing to refer to his painful, traumatic childhood as a loser in the bowels of Maine, Daisey depicts himself as a comic-book-loving outcast (he compares Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to Skeletor), harboring pre-Columbine fantasies of annihilating all the sources of his misery.
Each of the four couples in Bedroom Farce has its own crosses to bear, and each character displays alternating degrees of repression and emotional violence. Exploring the dynamics of repression and unleashed emotion was a Coward staple, but Ayckbourn’s particular innovation was to have the degree of these personality types differ within each character based on each situation. Ayckbourn is one of the best living playwrights exploring the inconsistencies in individual behavior, often mistaken for hypocrisy. The result in the case of Bedroom Farce is the kind of social comedy that, while still lighthearted and rather silly, reaches a higher plane of real human emotions that most so-called farces miss.
It’s understandable how frustrated Ayckbourn fans must be to see his plays staged in the U.S. so rarely. Thankfully, TACT’s production of Bedroom Farce, under the helm of director Jenn Thompson, doesn’t miss a beat. Set designer Robin Vest masters a vintage Ayckbourn dramatic space consisting of three beds for four couples on various planes of the stage. Every cast member seems in tune with his role, and no one in the cast or crew holds the show back in the slightest. If the goal was to give Ayckbourn a staging that fully showed off his talents to an American audience, TACT has succeeded tremendously.
Two major things hold back Sir Sheever. First, and perhaps most surprisingly, is Klein’s loosey-goosey choreography. With most of the actors playing mannequins for the majority of the show, Sir Sheever would seem like perfect vehicle for some of the staged movement exercises you learn in elementary acting classes. Yet, while the core of the motions are correct, the mannequins are not stiff enough for anyone to take the shock value of their eventual movement seriously. Whether it be a product of the relative inexperience of the cast or a lack of discipline in Klein’s direction, the looseness of the mannequins results in a play that seems more fun for the company than the audience.
Aenigma, though the weaker of the two plays, at least wins style points for being a little more daring. Playwright Sean Gill injects some theory into the weirdness, and Klein’s direction is a little sharper. The play can’t maintain a sense of flow, and occasionally borders on incoherence, but the premise of incestuous sisters being woven into and out of reality by a master manipulator is certainly deeper into left field. Aenigma could use a few rewrites and maybe an extra scene or two to reach its optimal level. Sir Sheever, conversely, has probably peaked.
The irony of such a safe, facile production is that Ibsen’s text demands of its audience the exact opposite of a feeling of safety and ease. An Enemy of the People is about a righteous man who doggedly refuses to back down from his ethical righteousness in spite of every conceivable obstacle thrown his way. Dr. Thomas Stockmann, the character at the center of the play, is a man of science whose sense of right and wrong clashes with the political demands of his community. He fights to shut down the highly profitable but highly unsanitary town baths not because of any political bias, but simply because it is the right thing to do.
This bastardized elitism is not the only element of this Enemy of the State that violates Ibsen’s spirit. Rather than show any realism or nuance in the plays’ characters, the Phoenix Ensemble’s production features almost nothing but caricatures. Particularly vulnerable is Jospeh Menino’s Mayor Stockmann, who lies somewhere between the Grinch and Mr. Burns. He makes Lionel Barrymore’s realism as Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life seem like Marlon Brando’s. The other perpetrator is Michael Surabian’s Aslaksen, who might have driven me to violence if he had said the word “moderation” in that same intentionally pronounced manner one more time. If there’s any hope to be found, it’s in Kelli Holsopple as Dr. Stockmann’s fiery independent daughter Petra. Ms. Holsopple is the only actor who seems to understand that realism is the entire reason why Ibsen gets staged anymore.
The production values mar what are otherwise some excellent performances. In particular, Mahmoud, who maintains his Ganesha mentality through multiple characters, commands the stage with his voice, his pinpoint-precise facial expressions, and a confidence that never drops despite all obstacles. As Katharine, Ellen Barry truly stands out as a Connecticut housewife with white-trash roots who, unlike her cold, bitchy fellow traveler Margaret, is unafraid to let herself get lost in emotion and wonder at the new world she’s seeing.
Empathy is clearly not the emphasis in such a bizarre play, but if you’re going to introduce a lost-love subplot and actually solve the murder you introduce, common courtesy is to make the events clearer. As it stands, the show wavers between a weird variety show and a classic revenge plot.
Brian and Dr. Jones are not the only people who need to spend some significant time on a couch (though they’re the only two who would be better off in a straitjacket). Brian’s best friend, roommate, and adopted brother Jonathan (James Edward Shippy) constantly wavers between the two poles of romance and familial ties. The lack of a normal young adult life - Brian has taken it from him - has clearly taken its toll. Jonathan is the most well-adjusted individual in the play, which for someone in his situation constitutes nothing short of a miraculous feat of strength of character. Not surprisingly, every time we see Jonathan, we want to see more of him.
We have the dominant, aggressive Venezuelan Xandra (played by Heller), who uses her foreignness—complete with brilliant broken English dialogue—to her sexual advantage. We also have Aurora (Anna Stumpf), raised as a hippie, with more Eastern sexual leanings (at least in theory). And we have the tough and practical if still lascivious Clarissa (a standout Lynne Rosenberg), who defines her sexuality as “some old fashioned who’s -ya-momma.” All three vie to seduce Lance Speedworth, an extremely attractive and large-packaged intruder into their home (he was stealing to support his dying sister) whom they punish by making him their slave—and not the kind of slave who performs traditional labor, if you get my drift. Contrasting with all the other three is Anna (Meghan Powe), a virgin farm girl from northern Minnesota who, while staying completely oblivious to the intentions of her housemates, falls in mutual love with Lance. 