home
web journal
journal archive
www.rogovoy.com | seth@rogovoy.com

| Concert Calendar | Cultural Calendar | About This Blog | About Seth Rogovoy |
| Live Appearances and Lectures | The Rogovoy Report Archive | South Berkshire Minyan | Disclaimer |


   rogovoy.com    Web   
5.29.11
This is an Archival Site
There is now a new Rogovoy Report home



5.18.11
Weekend Preview May 19-24
Bob Dylan tributes, Deborah Voigt, Tom Paxton, Bill Kirchen, John Kirk and Trish Miller



5.18.11
Celebrating Bob Dylan's 70th Birthday in Style
Paying tribute to the greatest rock songwriter ever



5.17.11
FILM REVIEW: In a Better World and Of Gods and Men
Review by Seth Rogovoy



5.17.11
'LIKE' The Rogovoy Report on Facebook
Click 'LIKE' to Receive Facebook feeds from The Rogovoy Report



5.12.11
Deborah Voigt Headlines Mahaiwe Gala
Opera star to sing arias, show tunes on Saturday, May 21



5.15.11
Famed Spiritual Teacher to Speak on Nonviolence
Mother Maya in free talk at Sruti Yoga in Great Barrington, Mass., on Friday May 20 at 7pm



5.12.11
Special Effects Wizard to Be Honored by Film Festival
Doug Trumbull to be Feted by BIFF



5.11.11
Weekend Preview May 12-16
Cultural Highlights of the Berkshire Weekend



6.4.09
Talk about a small world
Elaine and I grew up together, but only just recently met....



5.8.11
Berkshire Living to Cease Publication
A Farewell from Publisher Michael Zivyak



5.8.11
twiGs Branches Out
Lenox boutique launches new e-tail site



5.8.11
[MUSIC REVIEW] Avalon Quartet in Close Encounters at Mahaiwe
Review by Seth Rogovoy



5.8.11
[MUSIC REVIEW] Avalon Quartet in Close Encounters at Mahaiwe
Review by Seth Rogovoy



5.7.11
[FILM REVIEW] Bill Cunningham New York
Review by Seth Rogovoy



5.7.11
[FILM REVIEW] Bill Cunningham New York
Review by Seth Rogovoy





every article is indexed here
journal archive
(Theater Review) AMERICAN BUFFALO

8.1.05
BERKSHIRE THEATRE FESTIVAL
AMERICAN BUFFALO
by David Mamet
July 26-August 13

One of the greatest American plays of the last quarter of the last century is being given a terrific production right now at one of the Berkshire's finest playhouses, the Berkshire Theatre Festival, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. AMERICAN BUFFALO could well be the greatest play by our greatest living playwright. As seen in BTF's production, it is a minimalist yet exhausting work that builds upon Harold Pinter's theater of cruelty and adds quintessentially American aspects to it, including Arthur Miller's incisive critique of capitalism and its effect on family dynamics, the myth of the American dream, and a not insignificant dose of Abbott and Costello-like comedy.

AMERICAN BUFFALO is not an easy play to stage or to act. Mamet's language is so overwhelmingly powerful in this play -- it may be his most Mametian work -- that it can easily overwhelm a lesser actor, director, or audience member. But director Anders Cato and his brilliant cast, including Jim Frangione as Don Dubrow, Sean Nelson as Bob, and Chris Noth as Walter Cole, called Teach, find just the right combination of character and service to the text so that the two are seamlessly blended in a riveting and unusually clear and clear-headed production of this explosive and at times funny drama.

Credit also goes to scenic designer Carl Sprague, who put together the very convincing junk shop in which the entire play takes place. BTF's resident composer/sound designer Scott Killian hits all the right notes, too, in what will probably be remembered as the most incisive, well-acted drama of the entire Berkshire summer theater season.

But the ultimate credit has to devolve to the trio of actors who tackle the extremely difficult demands of Mamet's precise language, with its pregnant pauses, seeming non sequiturs, derailed trains of thought, and Tourette's-like outbursts.

They also have dug deep into the emotional core of the trio of small-town hoods and found the loving sympathy to portray them as they must be portrayed -- as the ultimate dysfunctional family. In the end, after all, AMERICAN BUFFALO is a play not only about greed, loyalty, business, and capitalism, but the most intimate bonds that tie people together even more than friendship.

Teach, Don, and Bob make an odd family, but Mamet drops enough hints throughout the play that he wants us to see them that way. Frangione and Noth find the perfect cadence as a sort of husband-and-wife, who one minute are goading each other on, the next at each other's throasts, and the next practically caressing each other, cooing and apologizing and reassuring each other that everything is or will be OK.

"Are you mad at me?" they constantly ask of each other. "I'm not mad at you," they constantly reassure each other. If it weren't for their child, read, Bobby, they'd probably get a divorce. But they stay together for the sake of Bob, and because, in the end, they have no other choice.






...sites that work