Interestingly, this production of American Buffalo is Geva Theatre Center's first staging of a Mamet play, although Geva has been performing American plays, particularly new ones, for several decades, and Buffalo is now a familiar modern classic. An almost perfect, tightly contained, three-character drama, the play is constantly amusing in Mamet's poetic simulation of working-class male speech and behavior while moving the three through deep-felt, basic aspirations into awful betrayal and defeat.
Donny Dubrow browbeats his young protege Bobby about work habits and ethics, all the while planning with him to rob a customer. When Donny's friend "Teach" comes in and learns of the scheme, he interferes, edging out Bobby and planning to execute the robbery himself, as Donny's partner. The fact that "Teach" -- who offers teachings of his own beliefs in hilariously incoherent and meaningless professions -- has no notion of how to get in to the house where the customer's coin collection is leads Donny to insist on another friend's participation.
When everything goes wrong, the never-seen friend doesn't show up, Bobby returns uninvited, and Donny has to compromise all that he has said and felt for the young man, the three finally end in mutual distrust and, finally, violence. It's hardly the Valentine's Day Massacre, but it does present a tragic sense of friendship, dreams and values lost. And the constant talk about "business" offers us Mamet's ugly sense of American business ethics that seems too darkly valid to be called merely cynical.
Although Sean Patrick Reilly's showy performance of "Teach" has too many inescapable echoes of Al Pacino, it has a passionate validity. Jim Frangione, who has played Donny in other productions stepped in at the last moment to replace the actor cast for this one and seems entirely at home in the role. So does Lucas Papaelias, riveting as the taciturn young helper desperate to gain Donny's approval. But if they are at home in their roles, Skip Greer's direction does not make them look at home in the junk shop. All three move about the appropriately confining space as if cautious about its unfamiliar obstacles.
Otherwise, Greer's dramatic build is well-paced and convincing. Rob Koharchik's junkshop set is richly detailed and atmospheric. And Kirk Bookman's complicated lighting underscores the changing moods without ever calling attention to itself.
