Varying takes on toxic masculinity and dysfunctional families are on view in two Broadway reviews of powerful, late 20th century works. Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive focuses on a woman’s recollection of her relationship with a pedophile uncle. On the surface, David Mamet’s American Buffalo examines a botched robbery among three incompetent petty thieves, but if you dig deeper, you’ll find a brutal, but sympathetic look at a makeshift family. Both are given strong interpretations by their directors and cast. Though Buffalo is funnier and showier, yet doesn’t delve into the play’s depths.
Mamet’s breakthrough work premiered on Broadway in 1977 with Robert Duvall in an explosive performance as Teach, a swaggering would-be master criminal who’s really just a lost blowhard. There have been revivals starring Al Pacino (1983) and John Leguizamo (2008) on Broadway and with William H. Macy, in London at the Donmar Warehouse and Off-Broadway at the Atlantic Theater Company (2000).
The three characters are part of a found family of hustlers, crooks and losers, congregating in a crowded junk shop, belonging to Donnie. Onstage Teach, Donnie and Bobby argue and plot to rip off a coin collector. The impromptu group also includes the offstage Ruthie and Grace, a lesbian couple, and Fletch, an expert thief (according to Donnie). The robbery is the seeming engine of the slight plot, but the real dynamic is the posturing and maneuvering by the macho Teach as he schemes to replace the scattered, drug-addled younger Bobby as inside man of the planned heist. What’s happening underneath the surface is Teach wants to push out Bobby as the adored son in the eyes of the father figure Donnie. When the scheme falls apart and Teach sees he has nothing underneath his testosterone-fueled bluster about manhood, friendship, and the American way, he throws a temper tantrum and destroys Donnie’s shop. Finally, like Beckett’s tramps in Waiting for Godot, the three continue together because they have nothing else.
Neil Pepe, who also directed the Donmar/Atlantic Theater production, has staged a funny and efficient version at Circle in the Square. Scott Pask’s incredibly detailed set is like a hoarder’s nightmare and creates the perfect atmosphere of decay and clutter. But the new production misses the family element. Sam Rockwell makes for muscular, threatening Teach and he delivers Mamet’s signature profane dialogue with snap and bite, but he lacks the core of loneliness seen in his Oscar-winning performance as the violent deputy in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and as Bob Fosse in the FX series Fosse/Verdon.
Laurence Fishburne plays the avuncular Donnie with the authority he has brought to his many screen roles including in the “Matrix” series, which is all wrong for this bumbling surrogate dad.
Only Darren Criss as a pathetic Bobby strikes the right notes of despair and desperation. He imbues this struggling kid with a yearning to belong that is missing from the other performances.
This early Mamet work is revived frequently because it offers opportunities for big laughs and volcanic eruptions (and it still should be done in spite of the playwright’s recent offensive remarks about teachers). This Buffalo has plenty of chuckles but little of the play’s potential emotional impact.
