AMERICAN BUFFALO
It can be devastating. Set in a resale shop under the el and populated with a trio of small-time scroungers, American Buffalo is capable of tearing your poor theatergoer’s heart out even as it’s plying you with absurdities. When Donny the shop owner lectures his addled junkie sidekick, Bobby, on the importance of a healthy breakfast–or again, later, when Donny and Teach confer knowingly about rare coins and safecracking, even though they haven’t the foggiest notion about either–you can laugh, as they say, till it hurts.
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But Nussbaum never finds a way to counterpoint the comedy. To give it density, depth, or darkness. After a while, not even William Petersen can stop the laughter: Petersen’s big store-trashing breakdown as Teach comes across as a minor, not very clearly motivated caesura in the comic momentum. When he puts on the paper hat, it’s nothing more than silly.
