GOOSE AND TOMTOM
Now imagine the child’s sensibility incorporated into an adult play–American Buffalo through the eyes of Teddy. A pair of heist artists plot against their rival. They discover they’ve been ripped off. They let their girlfriend stick pins in their arms to prove they’re tough. They discuss the spells that witches and ghosts have cast on them. Logic vanishes, chronology swirls, and the universe gets ugly.
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The play makes heavy demands of the cast, and the Transients, ably directed by Larra Anderson, handle them well. Scot Casey’s Tomtom is a Method greaser with a dented gun and a brand-new holster. He comes across like a five-year-old, all abrupt enthusiasms and sinking depressions. Goose, as Tom Daniel plays him, seems more like a three-year-old–frightened, belligerent, and ready to burst into rubber-faced tears. There’s a long bit where Goose describes how a ghost turned him into a frog. (“You think you can’t talk to me about that?” says Tomtom.) He has to make us laugh and keep us going along with it at the same time, and he does it beautifully.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Randi Shepard.
