American Buffalo
Opening Night: November 17, 2008
Closing: November 23, 2008
Theater: Belasco Theatre
David Mamet’s classic American comic drama American Buffalo centers on the bungled robbery of a rare and valuable American Buffalo nickel from a neighborhood collector. Directed by Tony Award winner Robert Falls and starring Tony Award nominee John Leguizamo, and in their Broadway debuts, Cedric the Entertainer and Academy Award nominee Haley Joel Osment, the play follows three small-time crooks who wax philosophically about society while conspiring to steal the coin.
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November 17, 2008
Ssssssssst. That whooshing noise coming from the Belasco Theater is the sound of the air being let out of David Mamet’s dialogue. Robert Falls’s deflated revival of Mr. Mamet’s “American Buffalo" – which opened on Monday night with the mixed-nut ensemble of John Leguizamo, Cedric the Entertainer and Haley Joel Osment – evokes the woeful image of a souped-up sports car’s flat tire, built for speed but going nowhere..
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April 22, 2014
Tenderness is not the first quality one generally associates with David Mamet. But really study his characters, and you’ll find that many are drawn with sympathy and even affection.
READ THE REVIEWApril 22, 2014
The four-letter words are intact but just about everything else is amiss in the slack, unsatisfying Broadway revival of David Mamet’s "American Buffalo.
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April 22, 2014
When "American Buffalo" is done right, the profane poetry of David Mamet’s dialogue can be bracing and the sad desperation of its three minor-league crooks — playing at being players — has a poignant sting. But in the three decades since the play was first seen, the influence of its speech patterns has become increasingly pervasive in films, cable TV and imitative theater, while humanized hoodlums have turned up everywhere. Maybe that’s why this starry revival sits so flatly on its impressive set. Or maybe it’s the lack of a connective thread among its performers. Either way, something isn’t working.
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April 22, 2014
Now comes “American Buffalo,” Mamet’s first full-length comic drama, which focuses on three petty criminals who plot to steal a rare Buffalo Nickel. Ironically, the characters view themselves as hard-working businessmen instead of hustlers.
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