There's something potently original about David Mamet's take on capitalism, something refreshing and impudent and not really illogical.
In Mamet's view, as evidenced in American Buffalo, the market economy is a legalized kind of theft which naturally causes resentment among those who participate in it, and almost inevitably leads participants to real crime. After all, capitalism means that I acquire an object for a certain price, and then sell it to you for twice that price — a form of theft, from one perspective. And then it's not a long distance from this sort of con game to other sorts of burglary, the sorts that require a crowbar or glasscutter. Of course, Mamet's no Marxist — he himself has done very well in the market economy — but he wants us to understand the implications of our system, to see where it might lead if unmediated by other values. As the character Teach says in American Buffalo, free enterprise is "the freedom of the individual to embark on any fucking course that he sees fit in order to secure his honest chance to make a profit." Since Teach is planning a break-in at the time that he offers this definition, we know how he interprets that little word "honest."
American Buffalo is, then, like the later Glengarry Glen Ross, a brilliant commentary on the subterranean energies of American capitalism. But the current production of Buffalo — by Jobsite Theater at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center — is deeply disappointing, loud and monotonous, and not nearly as good as Mamet's script. Watching this production, you wouldn't guess that Mamet is a brilliant manipulator of language, that his way with a pause is as powerful as Chekhov's or Pinter's, that he has a view of American character so innovative that he's had to create a new linguistic idiom to get it across.
True, one of the actors in this production — Ryan McCarthy — does a wonderful job in a relatively small role. But the two leads, Paul J. Potenza and Ned Averill-Snell, play their roles so very noisily, with so little modulation, we can't help but feel a little exhausted by play's end. Because Potenza and Averill-Snell are two of the best actors in the Tampa Bay area, these failings are not only dismaying, they're also a little shocking. How could they — and director Jason Vaughan Evans — miss the hundred opportunities for nuance in Buffalo, for irony, for farce, for tragicomic under-, over- and around-the-corner-statement? Yes, Buffalo is fundamentally serious, but it's also a natural sequel to Mamet plays like Lakeboat and Duck Variations, plays in which Ignorance is King and everyone aspires to the throne. How could this production get so somber — so painfully heavy?
As with most Mamet plays, there isn't much of a plot. Donny Dubrow (Potenza) is a junkshop owner who feels that he's been bilked by a customer to whom he sold an old Buffalo nickel. In revenge, he plans to break into the customer's apartment and steal the man's coin collection. At first he intends to team with his sidekick Bobby (McCarthy), but a friend named Teach (Averill-Snell) persuades him that Bobby's not sharp enough to pull off a burglary. So then Donny and Teach prepare to rip off the customer, but circumstances intervene and their plan goes awry. End of drama.
Now, if this seems a little thin for a full-length play, don't be mistaken: Mamet's genius is for dialogue and the delineation of character, and plot's just an opportunity for that talent to reveal itself. So listen closely to the dialogue of American Buffalo — if you can hear it through the booms of this clamorous production — and you'll see that these characters are awkwardly constructed of many ill-fitting parts: of a corrupt sense of "business," of resentment toward friends and strangers, of fear of the police and fear of being made a sucker and confused bitterness toward a universe that refuses to reward them for their defects. This is another thing that's missing from the Jobsite production: we get more than a sense of the characters' force and swagger, but we miss their helplessness, the pathos of two clumsy giants in a world of many tiny details. Done well, American Buffalo should make us sympathetic toward its main characters, as we're sympathetic toward people who can't manage their own affairs. Done well, we should be made to wonder: are we also so terribly ignorant? Are we also in over our heads?
Alas, what we mainly get from this production is in-your-face confrontation. Still, there is that one exception: Ryan McCarthy as Bobby. I haven't forgotten this actor's performance a year-and-a-half ago in Eric Bogosian's subUrbia, in which he convincingly played a tough, fast-moving, hostile youth, a vessel under pressure just waiting to explode. McCarthy's Bobby couldn't be more different: he's mentally backwards, probably burnt-out from drugs, nervously sincere, a damaged but eagerly loyal puppy. And as he did in subUrbia, McCarthy makes his part work. He excels in the details — at every moment he's communicating another clue to Bobby's character, another solution to the mystery of this particular human. I can't remember how many years I've been aware of Mamet's play, but I do know that this is the first time I've really understood Bobby, really believed in his completeness. Thanks to McCarthy's fine work, this character finally makes sense to me.
Eloquent too are the show's design elements. Brian Smallheer's realistic junkshop set is nicely seedy, and Summer Bohnenkamp-Jenkins' costumes are appropriately tasteless (camouflage jackets, anyone?). Still, these successes aren't enough. American Buffalo is mostly about Donny and Teach, about their desperate, criminal, hapless brand of capitalism. We should find in them equal parts vice and innocence. We should find them hilarious, repugnant, pathetic. These are complicated characters. They deserve portrayals as carefully modulated as Mamet's language, the language of false certainty, misunderstanding, hobbled judgement.
That's the American Buffalo that's become a contemporary classic.
But that's not at all this loud, simplistic interpretation.
Performance Critic Mark E. Leib can be reached at mark.leib@weeklyplanet.com or 813-248-8888 ext. 305.
This article appears in Feb 19-25, 2004.