Review: In ‘American Buffalo,’ Grift Is the Coin of the Realm
This crackling revival of “American Buffalo” highlights by contrast the devolution of Mamet’s craft that coincided with the shift in his worldview, from red-diaper baby to apologist for billionaires. How could the man who showed us how the powerless are crushed by the lessons of the powerful now argue, both in plays and on television, that the problem flows in the other direction?
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In ‘American Buffalo’ Nostalgia Gets in the Way of Progress
Somewhere in America older men impart wisdom to the younger between puffs of smoke and swigs of Coke. Somewhere in America, life is a powder keg with a short fuse, and morality is but an afterthought, as is breakfast. Somewhere in America, everything hinges on a coin. At the center of American Buffalo, David Mamet’s […]
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A Diluted ‘Little Prince’ Leads to Disenchantment
There was a child seated behind me at the Broadway Theatre the evening I attended The Little Prince. The boy was roughly the age I was when I first learned of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s exceedingly charming, poignant, heartbreaking tale. The child was getting excited, asking questions, enthralled by the pretty rainbow lights filling the space, […]
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