This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Juan Michael Porter II: Hello and welcome to the Critics' Table.

[0:02] Juan Michael Porter II: Every episode we are joined by three luminary theater critics as they review the latest shows on and off Broadway.

[0:10] Juan Michael Porter II: You may agree with one, all of them, or none at all, but we ask that you listen first and ask questions later.

[0:17] Juan Michael Porter II: Let's join the table, shall we?

[0:20] Juan Michael Porter II: Welcome to The Critics Table, a new podcast where we discuss the hottest shows on Broadway.

[0:27] Juan Michael Porter II: I'm Juan Michael Porter the Second, and today we'll be discussing American Buffalo.

[0:32] Juan Michael Porter II: But first, let's talk about some of the places where we are writing.

[0:36] Juan Michael Porter II: I write for Theaterly, New York Theatre Guide, TDF Stages, and Quirty.

[0:41] Christian Lewis: Hi everyone, I'm Christian Lewis.

[0:43] Christian Lewis: I write for Did They Like It As Well, Theatre Mania, Theaterly, and recently got to write for Playbill and Variety.

[0:49] Ran Xia: Hi, my name is Ran Xia.

[0:51] Ran Xia: I write for Did They Like It? There's a Theme Here.

[0:55] Ran Xia: I also write for Theatre Easy, as well as Eggsy and NYC.

[0:59] Ran Xia: Yeah, that's about it.

[1:00] Juan Michael Porter II: Awesome. Before we jump in, let's hear a quick synopsis of what American Buffalo is all about.

[1:06] Juan Michael Porter II: American Buffalo premiered on Broadway in 1977, received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play, and officially established David Mamet as one of the major new playwrights of the second half of the 20th century.

[1:20] Juan Michael Porter II: It went on to be nominated for the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play for the 1983 production.

[1:27] Juan Michael Porter II: The play was subsequently revived off Broadway in 1981, on Broadway in 1983, and off Broadway at the Atlantic Theatre Company in 2000.

[1:37] Juan Michael Porter II: So, first of all, what are our initial reactions?

[1:41] Ran Xia: I am uh not a David Mamet person, I will admit that. I was on the Twitter consensus, I was not very excited when this was announced, as your synopsis told us. We've had uh quite a few productions of American Buffalo as it is, so getting another one was like not the most exciting thing. And when I saw it, I'll just say it certainly did not change my opinion of this play or of David Mamet. Was not a fan at all, was not really understanding why we were doing this revival. I didn't really like feel like I gained anything in seeing this play about three men scream at each other and scam things and use slurs about lesbians and say really bad things on stage. I didn't really gain anything from this production.

[2:27] Ran Xia: I think there's a little bit of a um maybe I was in the minority of having gained something from seeing this particular production or this play, not necessarily uh which is not to say I gained something in a positive way as a human being, but um being someone who got introduced to theater via British plays and European sort of more varied styles of theater, I was never really introduced to David Mamet's oeuvre, nor was I super familiar with quote-unquote classic American plays. American Buffalo being one of the most famous ones that I've always heard about, but never read or seen a production of. So this is actually my introduction to David Mamet at all. Having seen that, I definitely felt a sense of oh, this is why Trump still served Big Macs at banquets. Because this there's a level of this is the comfort food of what a certain subset of American theatergoers are comfortable or familiar or like crave for. So that was my first impression.

[3:52] Christian Lewis: That's a really great point. I have to admit that I was coming into this with uh his comments about predators, teachers being predators and groomers in my mind, and as an educator I found that offensive. But then I remembered that his first wife, Lindsay Krause, actually owns the rights to the play, and that in a sense he was trying to sabotage it, so I tried to reset my mind and see it. And what I took away from it was this very cynical view at how men are constantly trying to outmaneuver each other. And to your point, Ran, uh um, it reminded me that this is sort of an American perspective of a dog-eat-dog world. I just uh found it initially tiring and left feeling um bored.

[4:34] Ran Xia: Yeah, it's kind of surprising. This is a rather short play, uh, but it has an intermission, and I was also shocked that in such a short play I could feel bored and that it could feel very long. I also just to the point about American masculinity that you both are making, I just think it's kind of like lazy to have a play where it's like here are three male characters who are toxic people, and that inherently is a commentary on masculinity, where I I don't think it is, and I think that's kind of like a lazy playwriting device to just put three angry men on stage and say we're commenting on American masculinity. Where I'm like, are you, or did you just like not have the creativity to like invent something else and explore this in a more complicated way with other types of characters?

[5:22] Ran Xia: Weirdly, I was thinking about how uh how the junk shop is a perfect setting because none of the stuff in a junk shop is actually useful. And you're kind of ruffling through all of that junk, trying to figure out some kind of value, and the American Buffalo itself is it's a coin, right? Does it actually have any sort of uh practical value, or is it more of this nostalgic symbol of there is something there if we dig deep enough, if we find comb through this text, there is something relevant we can discover here as opposed to just three men rapping angry thoughts to each other. And in the end of this not only not even two-hour play, nobody was really changed or nothing really substantial has happened. It's interesting that that defines it classically as a tragedy that change does not occur, that it's all the same, we're in the same place that we left, and not surprised by it either.

[6:27] Ran Xia: Um I don't necessarily think that theater needs to edify one, and I I was sort of surprised by how much it seemed that Mamet was willing to pull people down. And a part of me would like to think that, oh well, this is his way of saying that we need to tear down this idea of what masculinity is, but I I don't think that's true actually, because there is no real investigation of who these people are or why they do what they do. It stays very surface level, and uh at this point in time I want more from theater than that.

[7:00] Christian Lewis: Yeah, that's that's a really great way to put it. That I just I want more than this, and when all the characters are kind of just like equally bad people, it's also hard to kind of like have a takeaway of oh, did someone learn something, or was something specific the critique here, where when everyone's this toxic masculine person and has a lot of really bad traits of yelling at each other and greed and sexism and homophobia. It's like, what are we is this a critique, or are you just showing three people being like this?

[7:34] Ran Xia: Being from Southern California, like I have to say that like I like being around like really scuzzy terrible people because I can be a very terrible person who says like awful things, and what gets me about that is that how unfun it was that it was just like oh god or enough already. And I I'm curious if we have any ideas about what worked for us, what stood out, any performances.

[7:56] Christian Lewis: I actually thought there was some hope uh in terms of vulnerability and complexity in a lot of those characters. Um specifically, I feel like Sam Rockwell's Teach um well kind of piggybacking on your question of standing out performance, he does that type of volatile um kind of braggadocio of a character so well.

[8:27] Christian Lewis: Um, but then there was a lot of interesting vulnerability that leads into it. Uh so you see that parfait fish, you see that kind of porcupine sticking out of him that's from a place of insecurity. And I thought that was an interesting aspect of masculinity that could have been poked a little bit further.

[8:59] Ran Xia: Yeah, to me there was a similarly Sam Rockwell was definitely the strongest, and there was felt like this kind of like weird hierarchy thing where Sam Rockwell was definitely giving the strongest performance and felt very natural in a Mamet play. Like it just it really worked, his style really matched, he fit the dialogue in a way that felt natural. Lawrence Fishburne was good, but not as good. Darren Criss, who I usually love, felt like kind of aimless here and didn't like commit to a lot of the choices enough such that his character just felt like kind of dopey and not in the drug way, which he probably should have been more dopey in the drug way.

[9:38] Ran Xia: And to me, I think a big issue and it's how we start the play is that Fishburne and Criss the dialogue felt so like a shtick in their mouths and in their bodies that for their first very long extended scene of all the what? Where are you going? What are you talking about? The thing, what thing? Are we doing the thing? Did you get it? Where's my cough? It was like, please just stop. This is like never ending. No one talks like this. This is like coming across as like a joke, and it shouldn't be as much of a joke as it is, and I think the two of them really needed Rockwell to like balance everything out. So what the scenes that he was in worked much better for me.

[10:15] Christian Lewis: That makes me think about the direction, the through line about what worked well for Rockwell is that he actually had a forward narrative. And I I don't think of that character as a leading character. I think that the performance made it l allowed it to lead. I felt that um Fishburne was quite sedate, and you know, interestingly enough, even though he's a black man, I felt I don't know any black men like this. And and my guest actually was half black, half Italian. Instead, like to his point, he was like, is he playing him as a white man? Because this feels very much so like this this just happened to be a black person in a role for a white person which is very strange because there's no reason why Fishburne couldn't be a character in this play in black and respond to the N-word you know what I mean and I yes that part I thought really you you don't okay so I felt that uh I think that Rockwell definitely drove things but it's more to me that there's not a lot in this so we're extrapolating things about what it could be and looking at what he did with it but there's just not a lot within it to do and and certainly not from the direction perspective.

[11:21] Ran Xia: I didn't think that Pepe Neil Pepe the director had a real idea of who um the characters were that it was sort of like okay you guys do your thing because we've all seen the movie of like his girl Friday we're like well what are you talking about I'm doing this okay sir well what like that sort of thing but you see the actors come alive and in view that style with a sense of personality and for the life of me the only personality I found was through Rockwell the rest of it was submerged.

[11:47] Ran Xia: I was shocked when I learned because I'm not like a David Mamet devout person to know that David Mamet and Neil Pepe have worked together a lot of times and that Neil Pepe has directed this play before because when I left I was like Neil Pepe clearly just like doesn't get this play doesn't get David Mamet didn't know what to do but like nope apparently just like was really like phoning it in or not really giving a lot of direction here in my opinion.

[12:12] Christian Lewis: I was thinking about how it was a kind approach to stage these characters on the 2022 stage because it's probably it probably had to do with a lot of aspects of um like we've been talking about toxic masculinity and how difficult it must be to stage this play right now and we are in it in that junk shop we're still like I I think this is the play that forces you to try to dig through the junk and see like where is the value and I don't know I mean as a director this is not this is probably not the play that I want to direct. This is probably a play that I want to give to my acting student in an acting class because there's a lot of juice a lot of meat in there for them to perform but specifically for male actors which makes me want to shy away from that as well because you know you you need uh like as a director I prefer to find characters that could fit a more varied combination of performers as opposed to like here are three straight men or not necessarily I feel like there are different variety of um personality that can be developed from all three of them but I wonder like in a classical sense um and going back to earlier like the conversation in the beginning of the play it felt very much like whether we want to believe it or not this play has become a mode or like a basic recipe for a lot of like a whole generation of playwrights because I have seen so many plays are written following that formula.

[14:03] Ran Xia: And I feel like a lot of playwriting classes use those kind of scenes. Acting classes use those kind of scenes to provide a point of entry. And I really like hope we can we can jump out of that mode.

[14:20] Christian Lewis: Here, here. Um, thinking about the design elements, lighting costume. I I want to give a shout-out to Didi Akin, who at the Drama Desk we just gave a special award. She has basically co-clothed half Broadway, it seems, and off-Broadway. And the one thing I have to say is that she made Sam Rockwell's Tushy look quite, quite yes. Um, anything else that stood out to you all about the overall design?

[14:45] Ran Xia: I loved her clashing patterns with Sam. I loved he was always in like striped shirts and plaid pants, and I thought that was really good. I feel like a lot has been talked about with Scott Pask's set design for this show. For those who didn't see it, this show was at the Circle in the Square, it's the theater and thrust on three sides, so the stage is just like rectangle that's surrounded. And Pask made it a very, very claustrophobic version of the junk shop. There is stuff everywhere, there's stuff from the ceiling. I would love to know the like small amount of cubic feet that the actors actually have to work with because they are in like these tiny little alleyways, which is a challenge for them, and there are I've heard people say that like that was a really great design choice. I found it to be a very frustrating design choice to limit your actor's movement that much.

[15:35] Christian Lewis: I also think that it was not a great design choice in the sense that at the performance I was at, there's a couple stage combat moments, and Sam Rockwell got a little carried away and was flailing himself and Darren Criss about, and like props went flying into the audience on two different occasions. The audience is very close. There's a lot of loose props, it felt like dangerous and too cluttered for the way that this play needs to work. So I personally was like not a fan of the set design for that.

[16:07] Ran Xia: The sound design, whoever did it, the like rain sounds were like so good that while I was there, I was convinced that it was actually raining outside. I don't know if they did not even list a sound designer, which is very bizarre. But whoever did that, good job on the sound design. And also the like moody lighting for the second act. Good on that. I really appreciated the texture of the design for this production. Um really all of the element, the auditory to the textile of the set itself. It gave me a more cinematic feel, even though the ceiling aspect of the set was more installation-based because of, you know, there's a stylized and elevated um level of that junk shop. Um, but it did remind me of a lot of the junk shop that I kind of vaguely explored in the Midwest region.

[17:11] Christian Lewis: The lighting was beautiful with you know all of the chandeliers on top of there. Um I did got a little bit confused during the interval at go into the second act because of the time lapse. I I wasn't sure if anybody else got that feeling of like I wasn't sure how much time was meant to have passed not having read the play. Did you feel like the lighting helped that or made that more confusing for you?

[17:43] Ran Xia: It was a little bit confusing because I thought yeah, because I wasn't sure if second act is gonna be like a a different day or later that day, which goes back to like maybe we didn't need an intermission at all. Right, because of all of the lighting change, I thought maybe a day has passed um because I didn't read the play before.

[18:06] Christian Lewis: Yeah, it's supposed to be the first act. Yeah, the first act is supposed to be in the morning, like getting breakfast, and the second act is 11 o'clock at night when they're like meeting for their rendezvous. And the only reason I remember that is because I have a playbill with me, and apparently they wrote it in the playbill, which is nice, but not enough people read those. They talk about time a lot. I would have even loved a simple gesture of putting a big clock somewhere on stage and like moving the clock to give you a little hint for you like rain if you didn't know when it was.

[18:37] Ran Xia: To that point about time and and playbill and and when it didn't come through clearly in the production design. And I'm thinking about Morning Sun, a play that um was at Manhattan Theatre Club, uh, where the lighting is very clear about the passage of time, and I I wish that had been something to incorporate that. And you know, looking at the set, I do want to say that aesthetically I enjoyed it, but um Dave Harris, playwright has said that we all know this is fake, this isn't real life, and that the actors have to do something with it. And what they were given to do was hazardous to your point, Christian. And I can look at this aesthetically and be like, oh, this is what it's like to be in a real junk shop, it's so beautiful, and yet think, well, these actors might really hurt themselves or someone in the audience because it hasn't been put together in a way, or they haven't been given enough time on that set to where they can actually function without um possibly getting hurt.

[19:32] Juan Michael Porter II: And with that, I'm I'm wondering what our But I wanna say this is because I think the concept of that design is uh based on the experience of actors. So the experimental aspect of the design was actor-driven and not audience-driven. So instead of creating an environment where the audience could feel like they're inside of a junk shop, the actors, while performing on stage, they feel like they're in a junk shop. Which for us looking outside in, we are not gonna necessarily feel that level of claustrophobia, and at the same time, they are kind of all of their movement are going to be limited because you know, for that design choice. I wish there could have been a little bit of a more of a embrace the installation nature, embrace the suspend disbelief and expand that junk shop to incorporate the entire space and involve us.

[20:35] Christian Lewis: I don't know. Yeah, I would have liked that much better because I was just so confused the entire time of why this is in the Circle in the Square. It's actually my favorite Broadway theater. I think it's the best space we have on Broadway, and it's the coolest space they have on Broadway, and it's the only space on Broadway that lets us do cool things in that way. And to basically just like ignore that and be like, Well, I guess I'll design in the thrust because I have to. It was like upsetting, and I felt like it was a wasted space, and that this production would have worked better in a proscenium. Or, or like you said, Brian, like make it a little more immersive and put like props throughout the whole space, or even the whole ceiling would have even helped extend it a little bit, but like no attempt made to like use that theater as that theater.

[21:23] Ran Xia: Any our final thoughts. I wrote this in my query review that this is essentially a five-minute writing exercise that goes on 85 minutes longer than it needs to. Oof. Um, I wrote this in a different review, but uh this certainly confirmed the t-shirt slogan for me of Less Mamet, more vocal. I said perhaps the real tragedy is the fact that American Buffalo remains relevant today at all, but is it truly still the gold mine from which you attempt to dig up the real American or junk shop for us to rummage through the value and relevance? So it is indeed a junk shop, um, which I'm glad I passed through, but whether or not I bought anything or took anything away of value remains the question.

[22:04] Juan Michael Porter II: Well, thank you so much, everyone, for joining the Critics' Table. I'm Juan Michael Porter II. If you'd like to follow me on Twitter, I'm at Juan Michael Porter II for the second.

[22:16] Christian Lewis: I'm Christian Lewis on Twitter, it's at C Lewis Reviews.

[22:19] Ran Xia: I am at Rhino Riddler on all of the social media platforms.

[22:26] Juan Michael Porter II: Thanks for joining us on this episode of the Critics' Table Podcast. We would like to thank Jose Solis and the BIPOC Critics Lab team who has generously partnered with us on this project. You can find out more about the BIPOC Critics Lab at BIPOCriticslab.com.

[22:42] Juan Michael Porter II: Also be sure to subscribe to this podcast so that you never miss a review and learn more about our critics at bpn.fm/criticstable. The views or opinions expressed by the critics in this episode are solely their own and do not necessarily represent views or opinions of the Broadway Podcast Network.

[23:00] Juan Michael Porter II: See you next time.