Reviews 2006
Reviews 2006
✭✭✭✩✩
by David Mamet, directed by Stuart Hughes
Soulpepper Theatre Company, Young Centre, Toronto
April 4-29, 2006
Soulpepper takes its first stab at David Mamet with his Pulitzer Prize-winning American Buffalo from 1975. The characters’ speeches overflow with the expletives, racial slurs and misogynist remarks typical of Mamet’s studies of the American male. Though the production never quite catches the grit and menace that underlie this language, the show still delivers an emotional punch.
There is little plot. In a Chicago junk store, Don (Michael Hanrahan) wants to steal back a rare American buffalo nickel he recently sold a customer at too low a price. Bob (Jeff Lillico), a young guy, wants to help, but Teach (Ted Dykstra) thinks only an experienced man like himself is fit for the job. The real interest in the play is the characters’ struggle for dominance and respect. Mamet eviscerates the familiar pose of American bravado by exposing the specious assertions and circular arguments it uses to support aggression over patience.
As directed by Stuart Hughes, Dykstra plays up the comic aspects of the know-it-all Teach without quite showing us the character’s explosive instability. Hanrahan doesn’t fully capture Don’s inner battle against his own weakness. Lillico, however, is excellent as a mixed-up kid who desperately wants to be accepted by others who tragically are so unworthy of emulation.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2006-04-13.
Photo: Michael Hanrahan, Jeff Lillico and Ted Dykstra. ©2006 Sandy Nicholson.
2006-04-13
American Buffalo