American Buffalo
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Performing Arts
American Buffalo Details
Drama / Characters: 3 maleScenery: InteriorBest American Play, New York Drama Critics' Circle Award during the 1976-77 season, this volatile drama starred Robert Duvall in the original Broadway production and has seen revivals with Al Pacino and most recently on Broadway with John Leguizamo in 2008. In a Chicago junk shop three small time crooks plot to rob a man of his coin collection, the showpiece of which is a valuable "Buffalo nickel". These high-minded grifters fancy themselves businessmen pursuing legitimate free enterprise. But the reality of the three- Donny, the oafish junk shop owner; Bobby, a young junkie Donny has taken under his wing and "Teach", a violently paranoid braggart- is that they are merely pawns caught up in their own game of last-chance, dead-end, empty pipe dreams. "Gripping drama"-The New York Times "Mamet is an actor's playwright...[He] senses the possibilities inarticulateness affords a savvy actor."-Women's Wear Daily "It isn't often that a play with a dramatic intensity of American Buffalo comes to the Broadway theatre."-New York Post
Reviews
This play does not have a lot of plot or twists in the story but does have a lot of crazy back-and-forth quick dialog that is common with Mamet plays. If you step back from that and think about what this is trying to show you about human behavior, frailties, paranoia and overall desperation, this play hits it out of the park.
