Emmy and Tony Award winner Laurence Fishburne and Academy Award and Golden Globe winner Sam Rockwell will star in the Broadway revival of David Mamet's American Buffalo.
Mamet will reunite with director Neil Pepe (Speed-the-Plow, A Life in the Theatre) for the production. Performances are set to begin in March 2020 with an official opening on Tuesday, April 14th, 2020 in a Broadway theatre to be announced.
In particular, director Neil Pepe and his top-shelf cast of three explore how underclass grifters adopt the language of Big Business, how demonstrations of masculinity and bravado can calcify into toxicity and how individuals can be misled by conspiracy theories and lies into shocking acts of violence. (Scott Pask’s set also helps to underscore the message, as we follow the action in the theater’s in-the-round staging through stalactites and stalagmites of junk-shop objects that suggest the detritus of American excess.)
Now might seem an inopportune time to be reviving a play by David Mamet, who could be called America's bard of toxic masculinity, although the term was hardly current-in fact it hadn't entered the popular lexicon, let alone swamped it-when Mr. Mamet was in his prime. But the bruisingly funny revival of Mr. Mamet's 1975 play 'American Buffalo' on Broadway proves that such a judgment would be myopic. It's true that the play depicts men-mostly the foul-mouthed Teach, played by Sam Rockwell -displaying volcanic amounts of swaggering machismo, seasoned by a little misogyny and homophobia. And yet Mr. Mamet's characters are themselves the victims of their flaws and throbbing insecurities, so that any toxins they spew poison their own bloodstreams. In his finest plays, including this one and 'Glengarry Glen Ross,' Mr. Mamet is hardly a cheerleader for testosterone-driven aggression; he is a clear-eyed analyst of its destructive futility.
1976 | Off-Broadway |
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1977 | Broadway |
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1981 | Off-Broadway |
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1983 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
2000 | Off-Broadway |
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2008 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
2015 | West End |
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2022 | Broadway |
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Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
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2022 | Drama League Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Play | American Buffalo |
2022 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Actor in a Play | Sam Rockwell |
2022 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Scenic Design (Play or Musical) | Scott Pask |
2022 | Tony Awards | Best Direction of a Play | Neil Pepe |
2022 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play | Sam Rockwell |
2022 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | American Buffalo |
2022 | Tony Awards | Best Scenic Design of a Play | Scott Pask |
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