Emmy and Tony Award winner Laurence Fishburne and Academy Award and Golden Globe winner Sam Rockwell will star in the Broadway revival of David Mamet's American Buffalo.
Mamet will reunite with director Neil Pepe (Speed-the-Plow, A Life in the Theatre) for the production. Performances are set to begin in March 2020 with an official opening on Tuesday, April 14th, 2020 in a Broadway theatre to be announced.
Directed by Neil Pepe with the expert eye for appraisal that the characters lack, this production is vastly superior to American Buffalo's last Broadway incarnation, which ran briefly back in 2008. The play itself, which marked Mamet's breakthrough, is as thin as a dime, but it's got great atmospherics. Scott Pask's set and Dede Ayite's costumes plunge us into the shabby world of the action; seated around the thrust stage at Circle in the Square, the audience can almost smell the mix of dirt and desperation. Although not much happens in the play, which is less a thriller than a loiterer, it somehow seems fast-paced, thanks in large part to the three crack performers who bring it to life. They stride the stage with the game confidence of actors who know exactly how to make Mamet's monte look full.
Now might seem an inopportune time to be reviving a play by David Mamet, who could be called America's bard of toxic masculinity, although the term was hardly current-in fact it hadn't entered the popular lexicon, let alone swamped it-when Mr. Mamet was in his prime. But the bruisingly funny revival of Mr. Mamet's 1975 play 'American Buffalo' on Broadway proves that such a judgment would be myopic. It's true that the play depicts men-mostly the foul-mouthed Teach, played by Sam Rockwell -displaying volcanic amounts of swaggering machismo, seasoned by a little misogyny and homophobia. And yet Mr. Mamet's characters are themselves the victims of their flaws and throbbing insecurities, so that any toxins they spew poison their own bloodstreams. In his finest plays, including this one and 'Glengarry Glen Ross,' Mr. Mamet is hardly a cheerleader for testosterone-driven aggression; he is a clear-eyed analyst of its destructive futility.
1976 | Off-Broadway |
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1977 | Broadway |
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1981 | Off-Broadway |
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1983 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
2000 | Off-Broadway |
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2008 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
2015 | West End |
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2022 | Broadway |
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Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
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2022 | Drama League Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Play | American Buffalo |
2022 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Actor in a Play | Sam Rockwell |
2022 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Scenic Design (Play or Musical) | Scott Pask |
2022 | Tony Awards | Best Direction of a Play | Neil Pepe |
2022 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play | Sam Rockwell |
2022 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | American Buffalo |
2022 | Tony Awards | Best Scenic Design of a Play | Scott Pask |
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