After a two-year, pandemic-related hiatus, Bay Area Stage actors are back on the boards in what director Jeff Lowe calls a play with “poetry and lots of cussing,” David Mamet’s “American Buffalo.”
During a brief phone interview, Lowe said the three-person play, produced in 1975 and populated with the Chicago native’s typical working-class characters dispensing colloquial, often abrasive dialogue, “flows beautifully” and, nevertheless, “does tell the story” of mistrust and dishonesty among the conspirators in an aborted robbery.
The Vallejo-based troupe’s latest offering, which continues weekends through Feb. 13 at the company’s 515 Broadway St. space, tells the sordid tale of Don Dubrow, owner of a junk store, Don’s Resale Shop, where all the action unfolds. After a transaction involving a buffalo nickel, he believes he’s been taken advantage of. Miffed, Don persuades a young junkie named Bobby to help steal the customer’s coin collection, but is convinced by a conniving friend, Walter Cole — aka Teach — that Bobby is a doofus, a screw-up. Bobby winds up becoming a scapegoat as the burglary plan crumbles and tensions build in suspicion, anger and violence.
Before play’s end, it becomes obvious in this Mamet work, like his 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “Glengarry Glen Ross,” when a charged word can set off a theatrical grenade, that “You can tell this thing (robbery) is not going to be successful,” said Lowe, 61, a Limestone, Maine, native who now calls Vallejo home.
He cast Michael Sally of Oakland as Don, Luke Winders of Vallejo as Bobby, and Peter Warden of Marin County as Teach. Of the three, Warden is a veteran of BAS stagings, having played Felix Unger some years ago in a production of Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple.”
By day a licensed optician in Napa Valley, Lowe chose this play not only because the action takes place entirely within the confines of a junk store but also because it is, he said, “a work of genius.”
“The story arc and characters are so well fleshed out that it is like ‘being there,’ ” he said. “The dialogue is a masterpiece because it’s a Mamet play and that’s what he writes. The setting seemed to accurately reflect the new state of our venue.”
A graduate of Florida State University with a bachelor’s degree in theater arts, Lowe described the two-hour exploration of life’s lower rungs as a “hard-hitting, raunchy, disturbingly funny Mamet play that every adult of consent age should come see.”
The actors had a read-through some weeks ago, but, aside from that, the cast has performed all but one rehearsal via Zoom, he said, adding that, despite such an usual disruption to the normal production process, “We have managed to create great characters with meaningful relationships.”
Lowe, who has directed some 50 plays and musicals over the years, said his choice of an early Mamet work comes two years after the company was on the verge of opening Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”
“The actors were studied and rehearsed and then, heartbreakingly disappointed when I announced the cancellation of the show,” Lowe recalled in an email. “We all hoped it would just be for a month or two, but I had a feeling it would be quite a bit longer. Now, here we are, two years later, rescheduling ‘Cat’ to May 2022,” and adding “American Buffalo” as part of the company’s “early lineup” as the year gets well underway.
The ongoing pandemic, which some medical experts predict may be waning for the time being, “has been a great challenge for our show,” said Lowe, causing him to advance the opening date by one week and end the run on Super Bowl Sunday.
“Arg!” he exclaimed of the unexpected scheduling on what amounts to a national holiday.
Helping Lowe in his latest directorial effort are Stacey Loew, costumes; Scot Slagle, lighting and sound; and Sally Cavallaro, stage management.
IF YOU GO:
David Mamet’s “American Buffalo” at Bay Area Stage, 515 Broadway St., Vallejo. Showtimes are 8 p.m. Friday, Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday and again at 8 p.m. Feb. 11 and 12 and 3 p.m. Feb. 13. NOTE: Reservations and proof of vaccination are required. For tickets: (707) 649-1053 or online at www.bayareastage.org.
