In American Buffalo Mamet famously dirtied-down the English language. He returned low-life talk from the sleazier streets of life to the stage. In an America where everyone hustles to make it, even crooks have to be competitive and to work hard to be winners. This fact of criminal life gives the play its slightly sentimental, comic edge and significance. Teach's attempts to organise the robbery, after he has persuaded the shop-owner to dispense with the young assistant's services, nicely betray his own ineptitude.
Dissolution follows on.
Macy's aggrieved, self-important Teach is angry and his speedy manners energise Neil Pepe's far too placid production. He is pleasingly ridiculous too as he hustles, snarls and flatters his way into the shop-owner's confidence. It's a limited performance, though. Macy quite misses the sense of desperation and fury that ought to fire role and production alike. Meanwhile Philip Baker Hall's Don, the kindly though crooked shop-owner and Mark Webber, in a smooth and confident stage debut, as the devious shop assistant valiantly inject their energy into Mamet's wilted parable about a country where everyone sells themselves for something.