AMERICAN BUFFALO is the expletive-happy poetry that leaked from the pen of David Mamet as he was turning 30, in 1977, with an ear pressed to the shabbier streets of Chicago. The rhythms he recorded, heightening them into a rambling mix of profanity, anthropology, and all-American entrepreneurialism, were Caucasian, but they don’t suffer from a little African-American cadence being mixed in. Neither is director Evan Bergman — whose all-black production is currently sharing Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater’s Julie Harris Stage with an impressive jumble of detritus (through October 14) — the first to put Mamet’s symphony of convoluted tough talk and botched syntax into African-American mouths. Teach, the most flamboyant of the play’s three small-time crooks, has been famously assayed by white actors Robert Duvall, Al Pacino, and Dustin Hoffman. But Michael Corrente’s 1996 film deployed an African-American, Sean Nelson, as Bobby, the young, possibly recovering druggie huddled under the wing of junkshop proprietor Donny as the play’s trio, bungling a coin heist as well as their relations, demonstrate the pathetic ruthlessness of American business.
The WHAT production, then, is solid if not revolutionary, with Reg E. Cathey a tense rather than showy Teach, the danger in him tightly coiled even as the surface umbrage leaks out all over the place. Hubert Point-Du Jour is a shifty but childlike Bobby and Paul Butler a stolid, commanding, if soft-spoken Donny. And the play, hilarious and heartbreaking whatever color you paint it, remains a bristling testament to Mamet’s stage genius as yet unburdened by theory or affectation.
Related:
When in Rome . . ., After the fall, Lovely, dark, and deep, More 
- When in Rome . . .
Pretty soon the last four years might seem like just an unusually long winter break.
- After the fall
The evil is boiled down in the revival of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and that makes for a stew far tastier than Mrs. Lovett’s human-hamburger pies.
- Lovely, dark, and deep
Everyone’s tale winds up among the trees in Good Theater’s enchanting and absolutely virtuoso production of Into the Woods , Stephen Sondheim’s clever musical elaboration upon our favorite fairy tales, seamlessly directed by Brian Allen at the St. Lawrence.
- Night music
Classic musicals make substantial enterprises —this is now the best thing the Pops does.
- Burning Rome
Seacoast Repertory Theatre’s production of the Sondheim classic is droll, zestily paced, and full of bright colors and enticing choreography.
- The ultimate SALESMAN movie
Ruthless sharks, dumpy schlubs, or a combination of the two: Hollywood loves its pitchmen.
- Stamping grounds
Theresa Rebeck’s new Mauritius makes philately seem almost as exciting as the activity it sounds like.
- Old wives’ tales
A pretty girl is less like a melody than like yesterday’s news in Follies , the New York Drama Critics Circle Award–winning 1971 musical that lost money but became the stuff of legend.
- Stormy weather
The BSO has been having terrible luck hanging on to its star soloists.
- Isn’t it rich?
The biggest musical celebrity in town last week was Broadway great Stephen Sondheim, who filled Northeastern University’s Blackman Hall “in conversation” with his long-time associate, producer/composer Sean Patrick Flahaven.
- Proud to jump the shark
Who but David Mamet would have the macho audacity to name his TV show after the male genitalia?
- Less
Topics:
Theater
, Entertainment, Performing Arts, David Auburn, More
, Entertainment, Performing Arts, David Auburn, Jenna McFarland Lord, Julie Harris, Larry Gelbart, Michael Corrente, Paul Butler, Dustin Hoffman, Arsenal Center for the Arts, Less
