First staged in Chicago in 1975, this gritty drama by David Mamet explores issues of business, friendship, and loyalty among three members of the urban underclass. Donnie is a middle-aged owner of a junk shop, Bobby is his young protégé, apparently a recovering addict who idolizes Donnie and wants desperately to please him, and Teach, a brash and easily offended ne’er-do-well who discovers that Donnie has sold a rare American Buffalo-head nickel to a customer and now wants it back. Originally Donnie and Bobby scheme to steal it, but Teach pushes Bobby out of the plan, proposing substituting Fletcher, a shadowy figure who never actually makes an appearance in the play. If this reflects “business” in lower class urban America, one is struck by the limitations and minimal opportunities in which such individuals find themselves.The setting of the action is Donnie’s store, Act I being in the morning of a Friday, Act II being late the same evening. On senses that the plotting of the protagonists will come to nothing. The dialogue moves rapidly, far more approximating the actual conversation of such characters than is often found in plays, and it is fascinating to watch the shifting loyalties and self-serving plans and actions that ripple among the relationships like light over disturbed water. The abundant profanities that lard the conversations are not gratuitous but reflect the subculture in which the action occurs. There is a fascination here, a hardness and yet a poignancy conjured by the hardscrabble nature of these lives as well as the realities that require cooperation even in the midst of an unsavory business and mild criminality. There is also caring, although it is often disguised as brusqueness. If compassion for the human condition can only fully be born out of a knowledge and a feeling for the lives of other people, one way of experiencing those lives is through dramas such as this, and I found myself unexpectedly moved by it.
This is a tough, nasty little play that is stylistically and thematically very much in line with other things I have seen from Mamet, e.g. House of Games, Homicide, and Glengarry Glen Ross. The short, sharp lines of dialogue, the greed, the rough-edged characters are all there. And what Mamet does best is here too: the unpredictable twists and turns the plot takes, the surprises, and the explosions of the obvious.The story concerns Teach and Don, two petty crooks who operate out of a junk shop. There is young guy named Bobby who has been scoping out a wealthy coin collector. He reports that the collector has left town, probably for the weekend, and Don and Teach begin plotting a burglary. They cut the inexperienced Bobby out of the action, much to his chagrin, and replace him with a hustler named Fletch. In the second act, the tables turn and everything gets f***ed up. Double crosses occur, and these hardened toughs are revealed as a bunch of greedy buffoons. Mamet clearly wants to say something about this sweet land of liberty, about its lust for money and lack of ethics. For some reason in this play, he eliminates prepositions and pronouns in the dialog to give it some low class grit, an unnecessary move which made me question how much experience Mamet really has in this area. Still, the characters are generally believable if not particularly interesting. But in this plot-driven piece they don't need to be - one still pays attention right to the end.
What do You think about American Buffalo (1977)?
American Buffalo is a story of Friendship and Betrayal, parodic version of the American Dream and of course a social drama.As Mamet himself puts it: "the play is about the American ethic of business... how we excuse all sorts of great and small betrayals and ethical compromises called business."Don owns a junk shop, Bob is his gofer and Teach is his friend. The play's about an American Buffalo nickel which Don has sold and now he thinks he has been cheated and is professionally offended! Bob is
—Fara
(My reaction before opening the play and simply looking at the back cover:)Oh goody, a play for three men. There really aren't enough roles for men in American drama. SARCASM--So, when I was a young little actor, I worshiped Mamet for his snappy and crude dialogue, his anger, and his general "forget everything, life sucks" style of drama. I loved how nasty Sexual Perversity in Chicago was.But this? Not so much.When I look at this play I just see a cranky Mamet mess. This whole thing is just kind of schlumpy, working towards an end that I guess matters if you cared in the first place, but I didn't, so I don't. Mamet's other plays are genius, but this one was just not at all what I had hoped for.
—Kathleen
Nick M. S.American Buffalo is a book by David Mamet about a couple of crooks that are planning a heist of a rich man’s house. The story takes place in the main character’s junk shop in the 70s. there are only 3 characters in this play--Don, Teach and Bob.Although the story has a lot of salty language and violence (stuff I usually Love to read about), I didn’t really connect with ay of the characters. I felt that the characters were not relatable to me. I enjoyed the guessing in the beginning of the play, but when I found out what was going on I was no longer interested enough to even want to read on. The three characters made it hard to keep track of what I was reading, and I couldn’t always tell what the characters were suppose to be feeling.I had heard that Mamet had a lot of explicit plays, but if they are anything like this play, I am not interested in reading any of them. I am all for having less character in exchange for more interest in the few there are, but I felt no interest in Don, Teach, or Bob.I felt very little during this play. Because of the characters that I didn’t connect to, I was not angry or upset when things didn’t go their way at the end of the play. Although I felt annoyed, it was not because of what was happening in the story. I was annoyed by the way the dialogue was phrased and how they talked to one another.The biggest lesson I learned from this play was that I am not going to own my own junkshop and rely on someone else to steal from some rich guy’s house with me. I guess that I learned that I shouldn’t jump to conclusions when people don’t show up when they are suppose to, they could’ve gotten beaten up by some Mexicans.
—04nicks
