VILE shenanigans between low-lifes over the ownership of a nickel stamped with the American buffalo inform the plot of David Mamet’s eponymous play. Magic Roundabout Theatre Company is producer of ‘American Buffalo’ with Zeb Moore directing his Roundabout partner Darren Maher (Keith) on stage with Stefan Barry (Don) and Ger Meany (Bobby) for a tour that will notch up three venues and weeks of performances booked already. Nice work in a skeletal season for theatre.
Zeb Moore is a producer, actor, director and general mover and shaker with Maher and spouse Mrs Moore, the able Sylvia, in a variety of works. He and Darren Maher share director’s duties and “this time it was up to me to direct the next piece,” Moore says, matter of factly. “Darren brought the play to me after we had looked at ‘Oleanna’ and I’d read Mamet’s book ‘True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor’. I think we have ‘American Buffalo’ well cast with Darren and Stefan. Ger Meany from Limerick Youth Theatre brings a lovely vulnerability to his part as Bobby, the young one of the three who is really the gofer and innocent”.
Fans of Mamet know his fascination with machismo and posturing, greed and the male and questions of who or what man is when cornered. Note the bull motif on the collector’s item of a coin that slips from finger to finger, arousing atavistic need to manipulate, thieve and possess. The language of this tight act between three is shocking, American slang put to revealing use by this most precise of playwrights.
Zeb Moore praises the cast for hard work, each actor being ‘off book’ before he ever began directing, and open to elements adapted from the tricky Meisner technique.
“This play is about the relationships between each other. It’s dark and vicious with comic aspects.”
‘American Buffalo’ begins in Kilmallock’s Friar’s Gate on February 8, 8pm. On then to Loft Venue at Locke Bar here in town from Wednesday February 13 to 15 and Sunday 17 for 7.30pm shows, then St John’s Theatre in Listowel for February 20 and a fortnight’s run in Lanigan’s Bar in Dublin.
Stefan Barry (left) as Don with Darren Maher (Keith) plot against young Bobby for the return of a collector’s item nickel (5 cents), the Amercian Buffalo
