AMERICAN BUFFALO Doesn’t Tame its Beast — REVIEW
4 / 10
Am I spending too much time on the casting choices? Maybe, but it's not like Pepe's direction commanded my attention anywhere else throughout the hour-forty play. Apparently disinterested in the text, or in showing his directorial hand, he lets the cast wander about Scott Pask's purposely messy set without any ambition, or even pointed aimlessness. He also permits what few moments the script provides for contemporary contemplation - Rockwell's character angrily calling Fishburne's a racial epithet, for example - to go uncommented. This laissez-faire directing doesn't allow the second act's mounting troubles to build or release; a fight breaks out, sort of, it gets resolved, sort of, the play ends.
