Review of ‘American Buffalo’ by David Mamet at The Gate Theatre in Dublin by Cara Feb/March In ‘American Buffalo’ a junk-shop owner, Don (Sean McGinley), believing himself to have been conned by a customer into selling a valuable coin (the ‘American Buffalo’) at far too low a price, plots with his none-too-bright young protégée, Bobby (Domhnall Gleeson) to burgle the customer’s home and steal his coin collection. A friend of Don’s, Teach (Aidan), learns of the plot.He persuades Don that Bobby isn’t up to the job and that Don should involve Teach instead. The fact is that none of them are up to the job. Bobby is slow-witted, untruthful and evasive. Don is lazy and stupid (not only did he not recognise the coin he sold as valuable but he clearly has no idea of the value of any of his ‘stock’ and he's not willing to put in the effort in order to learn). Teach is cynical, underhand and impractical; broke after losing in the previous night’s card game he pawns his watch before the burglary – not a great idea when the ‘plan’, such as it is, depends on the participants all meeting up at the same time.Despite their very evident shortcomings, all three have bought into the idea of succeeding at ‘business’ – by which they pretty much mean getting one up on someone else. ‘Business’, Don tells Bobby, has to be separated from ‘friendship’ – someone may be your friend but that’s not a reason not to screw him over. The fact that nothing suggests that Don, Bobby and Teach will ever be anything but on the losing end does not stop them buying into the idea of a ‘dog eat dog’ society. Don purports to explain to Bobby what ‘business’ is all about and Bobby seems willing to accept that Don is in a position to explain. In this context the burglary (which never takes place) is discussed as though the three men are involved in a large-scale business deal - there's a huge disconnect between the high-flown, military-style jargon they use and their actual situation. Of course, their plans for the burglary are hopeless and are not helped by the fact that Teach hasn't slept for the last couple of days and is consequently hyperactive on worry, lack of sleep and coffee, one sympton of which is that he can't stop talking, and talking, moreover, at breakneck pace. The whole play is set in Don's junk shop (the set was brilliant) during the course of a single day and Don, Bobby and Teach are the only characters, so the play, so seemingly far away from classical theatre, nonethless observes the classical unities of time, place and character. Domhnall Gleeson, thin, lanky and ginger-haired, played Bobby as perpetuallyround-shouldered and awkward, shifting uncertainly from one foot to the other. Asked to explain his presence or what he wants his response was only an insistent, whining, 'I *came* here'. I had some problems with Sean McGinley as Don. Having been lucky enough to see two performances, one fairly early in the run and one right at the end of it, it seemed to me that in the earlier performance he really didn’t seem to be with it at all. He tended to pause before delivering his lines and seemed disconnected from his castmates. As it is Don who interacts with Teach and Bobby (Teach and Bobby say little directly to each other) the play and the dialogue juddered and lost its propulsion. At the later performance, SG was reacting and interacting much more and the performance therefore worked much better. Teach makes his entrance with a prolonged paranoid rant about two female friends who, he believes, have snubbed him and Aidan was pretty much bouncing off the walls, delivering great waves of lines in a single breath; clearly Teach was existing on adrenaline. When he listens to Don telling Bobby he’s not part of the burglary team anymore Aidan's Teach lurks in the background, triumphant at his success in persuading Don to drop Bobby. There are lots of funny moments when Don and Teach make their hopeless 'preparations' for the burglary, culminating in Teach producing a gun; 'It helps me to relax' he insists. And at the end (greeted with much laughter) Teach fashions a pirate hat out of newspaper to protect himself from the rain. Best of all, though, I thought, was a moment near the end of the play when Teach, having seen a doublecross where no doublecross existed, having struck Bobby for (as it turns out) no good reason, flown into a frenzy and wrecked Don’s shop, finally runs out of steam. He sinks dispiritedly into a chair, exhausted and tearful with the frustrations of failing; Aidan did this brilliantly. After all the swagger and energy, after Teach’s rage and cynicism you could totally feel how Teach had suddenly been hit by hopelessness, and you realised that the reason for Teach's paranoia is that (in contrast to Don and Bobby) he knows he's a loser, that all the talk is just that and there's no apparent way out for him.