'Buffalo' stuff, American-talk

Walking into the persistent heat of Nick Chapel to see American Buffalo, the first thing you're likely to notice is that you are no longer in Nick Chapel. The seats and the shape of the black box may be the same, but the walls are covered with metallic junk and splotched with paint, there's nasty looking carpeting, and if you look carefully on the door as you walk in you may even see a store hours sign. Though the set, designed by Jessica Kung, DC '03, may be as ugly as your common room, you're in Don's Resale Shop now, and this is the great accomplishment of director George Cederquist, SM '01, his crew, and his outstanding three-man cast. They have created a production with a raw, unbroken reality that theater all too rarely has.

Granted, the play is still the thing here, though on paper David Mamet's plays never sound as interesting as they are when staged. The plot goes like this: Don (Ryan Karels, BR '00) thinks he was ripped off by a coin-collecting customer who bought a rare buffalo nickel off him for far less than its true worth, and contemplates robbing the man's house. Bobby (Blake Edwards, SM '02), a twitchy, nervous, but oddly innocent kid who works for Don, wants in on the job. But so does Teach (Jeremy Strong, TC '01), a witty yet dangerous man who seems to be able to talk even the hulking Don into anything. Put these three together in `Mametspeak' language—full of "stuff," "things," and other non-specific words—and you have a vehicle for three actors and a director, but not necessarily anything more than that. Understanding what is really happening in Mamet's work can be hard enough, but entertaining an audience with conversations about yogurt, coins, and nothing at all is another thing.

Theater

American Buffalo By David Mamet Directed by George Cederquist Fri., Apr. 21, Sat., Apr. 22, 7 and 10 p.m. Nick Chapel $2

Amazing set aside, the actors are the reason why this version of Buffalo reaches that "other thing." Strong has the most noticeable role of the play, with lines like, "What do you want me to do? Dress up and lick him all over?" Even from his first entrance, however, Strong is not just a comic, and Teach in his hands is the funny yet disturbing character the script requires. But though Strong gets the play's best lines, Karels and Edwards play roles just as crucial. Karels, in his last play at Yale, brings both a naïvete and silent fury to his character, often just in reaction to Teach's lines. Edwards subtly puts on innocence from the first act, and the worse things become for Bobby, the worse the audience feels.

The one flaw of the play is that Mamet himself takes too long to set up his characters in the first act before knocking them down in the second. But when the characters are as compellingly played as here, it's hard to complain. If only they could turn the heat down in Don's Resale Shop. Or did they used to call it Nick Chapel?

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