Day 74: American Buffalo, by David Mamet

For a change, this one actually seemed to have a plot... or almost did. We don't actually get to see the plan through, since two people (one of whom we never meet) end up in hospital before the heist can go off. There are no women on stage and the two mentioned as the story unfolds turn out to be a lesbian couple who cheat at cards, and that (along with some colourful language on the subject) is all we find out about them, though again there's an implication of more going on, just the guys in question are too busy badmouthing them to each other to listen. Possibly. The story is perhaps an easier-to-follow indication of what the "point" of all of these plays might be: to show everyday disappointments and "natural" (or at least naturalistic) situations. It's a pretty normal thing for plans to be scuppered, even if the plan itself (to rob a guy) isn't quite so much a part of the daily dealings of the average member of the audience. I did find myself wondering if maybe this time we might actually get a resolution to the problems posed in the story.

Challenging established "rules" when it comes to any art form can often be a great way to bring in new ideas. In this case though, bucking the idea that a story should have a conflict and a resolution, or a setup and consequences... or even just a beginning, middle and end... it feels like sort of the literary equivalent of finishing a song a note early. Off-colour comments from the characters aside ("I'm not your nigger, or your wife") this play did at least resolve some of the plot it set up.

As a thought experiment, I tried imagining the various characters as female, and how they would play differently. Genderswapping the young apprentice is the most obvious, at which point the entire story becomes focussed on a bullied and damaged anorexic desperate to please a boss who is probably her father/uncle, and she's eventually basically beaten into a coma for trying to play with the big boys. It's horrific. If all three are women, on the other hand, it becomes a rather twisted take on a maiden/mother/crone dynamic where basically nobody likes each other, they all have their own agenda and eventually an argument turns into a catfight and someone winds up in hospital... and the whole thing is kind of a dark comedy. Perhaps most interesting would be to cast Teach as a woman. I'll admit I've been focussed on how there aren't a lot of well-written women in these plays, and I may have been swayed a bit by reading a lot of articles lately on the subject of women in hollywood/on stage. I played a number of traditionally male roles growing up - in a largely all-girls environment it was usually the larger girls who maybe didn't fit as well into the stock costume dresses who ended up playing boys... but I liked it. I was never going to be Juliet, or Hermia... but I made a pretty good Mickey in Blood Brothers.