22 to 27 May 2007

American Buffalo

by David Mamet

directed by James Newton

A junk shop. Three small-time crooks plot to carry out the midnight robbery of a coin collection. In the hours leading up to the heist, friendship becomes the victim in a conflict between loyalty and business.

The conflict explored by Mamet here is the clash between business and friendship -- between a man's ethics and his desire to succeed in a world where so much of the population has subscribed to a shared myth of capitalism. As one character tells his younger friend, "There's business and there's friendship" -- two worlds which will be combined and then torn apart by the time the play is finished.

Review