Power of Pryor

Slow cooking yield the richest flavor, I'm told. Having just seen Theatre Exile's marvelous American Buffalo, I believe it.

Initially, I wasn't sure. David Mamet's 1975 play — a feisty allegory set in an old junk shop, where three small-time losers battle over a buffalo nickel — is usually treated as a macho tightrope act. Yet here, the shop proprietor, Donny Dubrow (played by Joe Canuso), seems more avuncular than threatening. Bobby (Robert DaPonte), a troubled druggie who hangs out with Donny, is a lost boy with a sweet/sad face. And what about "Teach," the high-octane thug who catalyzes the action? Well, he's played by Pete Pryor, a superb actor who veers flawlessly from gritty to funny. But Pryor is just so damn likable. Not many people can make "cunt/dyke/cocksucker" sound endearing, but Pryor does. Even the shop itself — a wonderfully detailed set by Matt Saunders — is just one little seedy step away from quaint.

In Act 2, Pryor's performance — a thing of beauty, calibrated to perfection — takes on new colors. Under director Matt Pfeiffer's sure and steady hand, it's true that a little of the roughness has been smoothed off Mamet's script. But what's here is more interesting. By giving the early scenes an unexpected sense of normalcy, this Buffalo delivers in a way that's not only ballsy, it's detailed and poignant and surprising.

That's a great compliment to a play I thought might have passed its sell-by date. Every Brando wannabe can reel off the first six words of Teach's opening speech ("Fuckin' Ruthie, fuckin' Ruthie, fuckin' Ruthie"). But Mamet is now a familiar commodity. And the original context — on the brink of America's bicentennial, at a time when the country was still steeped in the catastrophe of Vietnam — is, happily, gone. Here, though, Buffalo has new resonance for an ugly economic time. And in the gifted hands of Pryor, Pfeiffer and others, it feels newly minted.

(d_fox@citypaper.net)

American Buffalo | Through May 3, $25-$30, Theatre Exile at Plays and Players Theatre, 1714 Delancey St., 215-218-4022, theatreexile.org