The Woods-Southwark Playhouse

In the same month two plays have opened in London both 90-minutes long and both using the same analogy for the knotty complexities of love and relationships with both culminating in some form of male violence. But while the world premiere of Florian Zeller’s The Forest at Hampstead Theatre used its allegorical title well, capturing the sudden density of circumstances as protagonist Pierre becomes increasingly lost in the mess he may have created, Southwark Playhouse’s revival of David Mamet’s The Woods only ever skims across the surface of characters Ruth and Nick in a talky drama that fails to say very much.

Written in 1977, the play received a mauling when it opened in New York a couple of years later and during the 1980s further performances were banned by the writer. It hasn’t been seen in the UK for over 20-years and it seems a curious decision to revive it now despite its attempts to engage with notions of sexual politics and the desire for a cleaner, simpler country lifestyle that many craved during the pandemic. Yet, The Woods feels decidedly old-fashioned in style and structure, using its characters as ciphers for Mamet’s abstract conclusions about relationships between men and women.

Mamet’s very best work focuses entirely on masculinity and the sometimes toxic competitiveness that exists between them particularly in capitalist environments. Glengarry Glen Ross remains a modern classic with a West End revival and tour directed by Sam Yates reminding us what a crisp and skewering writer Mamet could be. Similarly a 2015 production of American Buffalo with Damian Lewis and John Goodman was equally insightful about the egotism of men in a small junk shop grappling with their need for space and recognition. But Mamet has been on far shakier ground with female characters some of whose depictions have been laced with misogyny – the tasteless comedy of Bitter Wheat a case in point.

The Woods is a puzzling piece, naturalistic in setting but frustratingly elusive in purpose with thinly drawn characters who talk in bold phrases but never reveal a single personal thing about themselves or their lives, making it hard to believe in them as real people and even harder to care about a single thing they say or do. Ostensibly an Adam and Eve metaphor, Ruth and Nick are taken on a troubling path through the story, a relationship deteriorating in microcosm in the space of one night.

Mamet greatly admired and even wrote to Harold Pinter so throughout The Woods you can see Mamet feeling for that same kind of abstracted otherness, trying to reach a similar place where reality shifts very slightly to create a heightened intensity where ominous overtones of threat or danger shape the plot. That Mamet doesn’t get anywhere near the tonal precision and linguistic specificity of Pinter is the great tragedy of The Woods and make it an unsatisfactory experience.

Part of the issue is the very literal staging the story demands, set on the porch of a cabin in a very visible, tangible wood. It creates the feel for nature that peppers the text, referencing various creatures the couple see but unlike Zeller’s treeless The Forest designed by Anna Fleischle, Mamet’s play in comparison feels too heavy-handed, hammering home the metaphor of relationships being like a forest by setting the story in a real wood. A more representative hinterland could have drawn out those Pinter-esque tonal shifts but even in Russell Bolam’s new production for the Southwark Playhouse, Anthony Lamble’s otherwise pleasant log shack feels far too literal for the unnatural dialogue.

Mamet gives us nothing at all to go on when it comes to introducing Ruth and Nick to the audience; we learn little about them as individuals, not how long they have been together, what either of them do in the mythical ‘city’ they refer to or how they met. They never mention friends they have in common, they have no hobbies or interests other than going for walks, sex or holding each other, suggestions which recur throughout the play, and the factual basis for their existence is entirely withheld, leaving the audience to form an understanding of who they are only from the things they say.

However, both characters talk in repetitively bland, almost entirely meaningless phrases about the difficulties of self-knowledge, proclamations about how ‘clean’ the air is in the country, the cawing of gulls and vagaries about their feelings for one another. The first Act primarily establishes their seemingly unequal love and investment in their relationship, an emotional connection that is almost constantly spoken about by Ruth who spends much of this initial scene reassuring Nick of his sexual allure, skittering between stories connected to the woods including a Martian visit and war service and Ruth’s constant, almost possessive need to touch Nick.

There are hints, even here, that Nick is stereotypically afraid of commitment, not recoiling from Ruth but detached and less willing to discuss his feelings or even finding any obvious enjoyment in being at his cabin with her. By Act Two set late the same night, that frustration has expanded as a somewhat laboured, storm approaches which reveals Nick’s fear, resulting in what seems to be a clear sexual assault although this is not how Ruth reacts to it. With an ensuing conversation about other partners that Nick has brought to the cabin, Mamet treads a gendered line in which his archetypal male protagonist either wants sex or to be left in peace while his female avatar talks of love and commitment while actively encouraging the sexual bravura of her partner, even reassuring him after he attacks her.

The result is a confusing piece that builds to moments of violence which it is then overly casual about. Ruth fights back and threatens to leave, even going so far as packing her bags, but Mamet makes this feel part of the game, the audience and the central couple knowing that there is more to come and drastically undermining her surface decisiveness. But there is nothing underneath and The Woods feels like a series of empty gestures that offer-up a plot of sorts with no emotional basis for either character’s behaviour or as a way to demarcate the power shifts that happen along the way, leaving the once strong and silent Nick strangely infantilised. How and why is rooted in morning-after guilt but there is so little credibility in the picture Mamet has painted that the audience cannot grasp why the fate of these characters, shackled together for a brutal eternity in the woods, is a symbol of whatever point Mamet is making about relationships. And given his recent comments in The Guardian that the natural urge in men is for sex and in women to have babies, this is not a particularly nuanced understanding of gender.

Bolam’s production for Southwark Playhouse doesn’t really resolve any of these ambiguities or issues within the text and suffers as a result. There is an attempt to give Ruth greater agency and control of her body than the play allows through moments of reaction and a firmer, more controlled tone to her speeches, but despite flashes of intensity between the warring pair, the play’s shortcomings cannot be concealed. It is a small, intimate space that should be filled with the play’s emotional contortions but lacking those Bolam uses the porch front and small area of garden to move the actors around as much as possible, making dizzying use of the space as they march infeasibly from bench to tree stump to cabin trying to inject some physical energy into a lacklustre debate.

There is notably very little music even between scenes, only soundscaping designed Ali Taie who provides woodland sounds and some low thrumming in the blackouts between the Acts. However, with so little atmosphere in Mamet’s text, the prudent use of composition might have been helpful in setting the scene or representing the darkening tone as the mood shifts, and it seems a shame not to have used more sound, even thunder to match Bethany Gupwell’s lightening, to lift the piece and it give it a bit of drive.

Francesca Carpanini does what she can with Ruth and probably has the best of it in terms of giving the character what little purpose exists for her in the script. And although the cadence of her American accent means the delivery becomes a little samey, Ruth moves from being annoyingly affectionate, overly tactile and almost smothering to a more forceful partner unwilling to easily concede to Nick’s demanding behaviour. Carpanini gives Ruth as much emotional complexity as she can given the two-dimensional characterisation but it becomes increasingly interesting to watch her transition from romantic idyll to grubby brawl as the story moves on.

Sam Frenchum has almost no room for manoeuvre with Nick who becomes increasingly less sympathetic. There are lots of loose ends that Mamet never resolves including a recurring dream about a bear, trouble sleeping and a seemingly equal distaste for town and country that plague Nick, nor are there any explanations or remorse for his acts of aggression that violate his girlfriend so Frenchum has an uphill battle to keep the audience interested in Nick for 90-minutes. He does and that is to Frenchum’s credit but its a thankless task.

There are plenty of plays that chart the rapid decline of romantic and other relationships in just a few hours and many of them like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf or God of Carnage do it much better than The Woods. Advertised as a ‘battle of the sexes’ play, it’s not nearly as light or as entertaining as that phrase suggests. With stylised dialogue, questionable gender politics and a too literal setting, The Woods gets rather lost in itself, and with very few contemporary insights to offer, it’s a wonder that Mamet’s duologue has been revived at all.

The Woods is at the Southwark Playhouse until 26 March with tickets from £10. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook Cultural Capital Theatre Blog

Bitter Wheat – Garrick Theatre

With starry revivals of David Mamet’s plays within the last few years, for lovers of his work the prospect of an entirely new play should be an exciting one. Yet Bitter Wheat comes preloaded with controversy for its focus on a Harvey Weinstein-like character set in a sexist and misogynistic Hollywood world. Long before a single line of the play had been seen, Twitter was alight with indignation at the prospect of the first major #MeToo play focusing on the perpetrator of numerous sexual misconduct allegations and written by a male playwright. But protesters were right to be wary because Bitter Wheat is not only frustratingly irresponsible in its treatment of these events, it is also a poorly constructed drama.

David Mamet is deservedly a writer of great renown, producing work that has carefully dissected aspects of the post-war USA while shining a light on the substantial distance between the glittering American dream and the fractured reality it engenders. Mamet’s skill and fascination as a dramatist has been in the skewering of American masculinity, adrift in an era without purpose and the combative structures men have consequently create for themselves in their working and social lives to distract from the essential emptiness and futility of modern living. Deep in their psyche, his urban-based characters yearn for the pastoral simplicity of rural America, an almost romantic longing to connect with the land as a representation of a happier past – not dissimilar to the romantic poets’ rejection of industrialisation and love for the soul-enhancing force of the British countryside. Mamet’s men are in the void between their aspirations and the far uglier reality that truly awaits them.

In a similar vein, his work has always spoken to American social values, of its belief in personal achievement, family and success as the markers of a life well lived. So much post-1945 US literature and art has sought to debunk the essential falsity of these aspirations and expose the dark underbelly of a society pursing them at all cost. Mamet has so brilliantly shown how the commodification of the American Dream has resulted in the soulless destruction of the very society it sought to create and the obsession that many of his characters have with status objects, demonstrations of corporate power, money and fame are redolent of the fundamental weakness underlying modern masculinity in Mamet’s view. We see this clearly in American Buffalo – revived in 2015 with Damian Lewis and John Goodman – is concerned with shifting power dynamics among three friends confined within a junk shop, an all too metaphorical representation of the modern American state.

But nowhere are these ideas more purposefully and successfully explored than in Mamet’s masterpiece Glengarry Glen Ross, one of the truly great plays of the twentieth-century. Forcefully revived by Sam Yates at the Playhouse Theatre with Christian Slater and recast in 2019 for a superb UK tour, Mamet’s world of aggressive salesman, adversarial business practice and – in a direct link to Arthur Miller’s Willy Lowman – the desperation of the ageing star player losing his touch. 35-years on the play retains every bit of its punch. What makes Bitter Wheat so frustrating and disappointing is that it does none of these things, taking a narrative approach that detaches the action from its wider context, leaving it almost nothing to say.

The central role of Barney Fein is undoubtedly a terrible one, he’s dismissive, entitled, rude, forgetful and entirely without conscience or remorse. Whether he is belittling his mother’s funeral or demanding a newly-married (and unseen) woman visit his hotel room for sex, Fein is a monstrous creation. But, outside of panto, that is insufficient to sustain a 90-minute drama when the psychology of the man and the wider surroundings that both create and facilitate his behaviour remain entirely unexplored. In Glengarry Glen Ross, Ricky Roma et al’s venality is equally obvious but that better constructed drama shows clearly how the target-driven nature of the firm and the toxic culture of 80s America with is status-driven commercial obsessions infiltrate the walls of the office and underscore these characters. In Bitter Wheat, the empty rooms of Fein’s office and hotel suite suggest nothing beyond, Mamet gives us no proper context and instead allows his character to exist almost wholly unchallenged throughout the play.

Mamet’s mistake is to place Fein at the centre of the drama without ever properly exploring how this man was created or how the fear and inattention of others silently justified and permitted his behaviour. John Malkovich’s Fein is a moral void but all Mamet does here is tell a story without truly understanding or exposing the mechanics of his abuse. Turning Bitter Wheat into a comedy means it lacks proper analysis and any serious attempt to untangle why such men have operated unchecked for so long. Crucially, we never understand how the longer-term impact of these experiences have affected the people most involved – the victims.

Fein is surrounded by a handful of characters who have next to nothing to do including two thinly sketched female roles and an extended staff who pad-out his world, procuring and enabling his whims. Yet the focus on Fein means the entire play lacks any real danger or consequence, so it may be creepy when he corners a young female actor in a hotel room promising her a number of film projects, but with much of the encounter played for laughs the whole tenor of the production is destabilised.

Having taken a Viagra tablet and let down by his married mistress (or other unspecified kind of companion – and Mamet takes no time to explain this absent woman’s status, she is just for sex) Fein manipulates and attempts to manoeuvre his pray into sleeping with him. A stuck zipper and a time-sensitive predicament anticipating his imminent engorgement are made farcical  – here is a man who needs to have sex struggling with his trousers and trying to encourage the women in the room to service his needs – hilarious no?

What is even more disturbing about this scenario is the audience reaction which on different nights has included widespread guffawing at this and several other examples of Fein’s dismissive and damaging behaviour. Some are the nervous giggles of an audience confronted by emotional responses they cannot process, but the intention is to provoke genuine amusement at a scene in which a powerful man is about to coerce or potentially even rape a young woman. That Mamet constructs this as a comedy scene is truly disturbing, disgusting even, and such attempts to normalise this behaviour have allowed it to go undetected and unchallenged for decades if not centuries. There is a lightness to Mamet’s approach that not only fails to fully expose the indecency of Fein’s behaviour but also sells short the #MeToo experience under the guise of “black comedy”. Rather than exposing them, Bitter Wheat does much to reinforce these behaviours by badging them as harmless fun.

Compare this to how carefully and intelligently James Graham deconstructed the personality and influence of Rupert Murdoch in Ink which used its comedy sparingly and smartly to make its point. Graham not only managed to reframe our picture of the media mogul but also the birth of populism that has been a driving force of so much recent political activity. Setting his play in the late 1960s allowed Graham to show, without ever sympathising with or excusing him, how Murdoch’s early desire for innovation on Fleet Street was situated within his own rejection by the Establishment and how quickly The Sun creators lost control of the wave of egalitarianism they tried to unleash.

Pointedly, Murdoch is a supporting player in a comedy drama that focuses on inaugural editor Larry Lamb, and while his overall influence runs through the play it is felt rather than seen. Mamet, by contrast, has given his drama nowhere to go by creating an artificial flatness which his own toothless direction does little to enliven. Across four sequential scenes the audience is shown a bad man saying (not actually doing) a variety of bad things which in the farcical construct that Mamet employs equate Fein’s racism, inhumanity and sexual misconduct as a bundle of personality traits that are almost excused or tempered by their existence as comic impulses. To misquote Posner in The History Boys, if you can laugh at something, you laugh it away, and Bitter Wheat’s fundamental issue is to construe Fein’s behaviour as inherently funny and too extreme to be truly credible without a rigorous analytical framework to question his activities such as Graham employs.

Adding to this misjudgement is the production’s general failure as a piece of theatre. Political considerations aside, building-up the protagonist comes at the expense of the other characters and very few meaningful exchanges take place outside of Fein’s self-absorbed and self-justifying monologuing – there’s not even the trademark Mamet rat-a-tat dialogue to entertain you. Primary support is provided by Doon Mackichan as Fein’s assistant Sondra with very few lines and Ioanna Kimbrook as a mistreated actor Yung Kim Li but neither role is properly fleshed-out or given a point of view. Mackichan’s role is particularly perplexing and whether Mamet intends her to be silently complicit in helping to facilitate his assaults or is herself a victim of his dismissive treatment remains unclear.

Kimbrook has more to do in first realising and then fending-off Fein’s unsubtle advances but a surface suggestion of personal agency is entirely devalued by the cipher role the character has in the play in which every line and every laugh is constructed for Fein. Kimbrook builds the role as much as she can but, ultimately, Yung Kim, Alexander Arnold’s second assistant Roberto and Teddy Kempner’s Doctor Wald all dance around the central figure with no obvious existence in their own right.

For Malkovich fans, the chance to see their hero on stage for the first time in more than 30-years will be irresistible and he delivers exactly the chilling, amoral performance the part requires. But the two-dimensional quality of the role makes it a very cerebral, studied performance from Malkovich, full of rehearsed gestures and intonation that feel too consciously formed. There is intimidation in his scenes with Kimbrook but the brutality and earthy hunger of the man able to take whatever he wants with no consequences never comes across. He’s never sympathetic but he’s never entirely real either.

Bitter Wheat is full of curious staging decisions which equally divest the drama of its purpose; between each of the three scenes in the first half a stark curtain abruptly comes down with no music or means to fill the interlude. Christopher Oram’s detailed set is very nice, a series of stylish rooms that fit Fein’s mode of living but the time taken to reset them drains energy from the production while Mamet’s direction never connects the dots so Bitter Wheat becomes a collection of scenarios with little forward-motion or sense of cause and effect. The overall result is disjointed and disappointingly flat and although a couple more previews may inject some chemistry, it’s hard to shake feeling that the play is entirely without purpose.

To argue that the play is told from Fein’s point of view and that the other characters are therefore his reflections is just not good enough in a self-badged #MeToo play. There are eventual consequences for Fein but they feel weak and unconvincing, so ultimately Bitter Wheat has nothing to say and entirely misses the point. It’s not that it’s too soon or even that a male playwright or a male experience shouldn’t be explored, but if they are, they need to be much smarter and more self-aware than this. Alas Bitter Wheat leaves a bitter taste.

Bitter Wheat is at the Garrick Theatre until 21 September with tickets from £15. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook: Cultural Capital Theatre Blog

Glengarry Glen Ross – Playhouse Theatre

The Playhouse Theatre seems to attract a big American star at least once a year; last year it was Matthew Perry in The End of Longing, and before that Lindsay Lohan offered herself up to considerable approbation in Speed-the Plough. This year it’s the turn of Christian Slater who takes on the lead role in the latest revival of Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet’s brutal two-act story of property salesman in 80s America. There’s something about Mamet’s spare, macho style that never seems to go out of fashion, and following an excellent all-star revival of American Buffalo at the Wyndhams in 2015 with John Goodman and Damien Lewis, a return to Glengarry Glen Ross feels particularly timely.

As with American Buffalo, Mamet is examining multi-forms of masculinity in the ultra-competitive and extremely pressured office of property salesman, pitting a small group of men against each other each month in the attempt to earn big bonuses and gifts. There are clear comparisons with the equally cut-throat financial sector and watching Glengarry Glen Ross will trigger references to The Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short, as well as numerous other banking-sector exposés.

But in his relatively short play, what Mamet does so well is to show a world in flux, a period between a comfortable past and a more uncertain future which acts as either a threat or stimulus to the behaviour of the characters. To some degree, it pits old against new methods in the pursuit of signed contracts, while playing with concepts of lucky streaks, desperation to be given the best possible chance of success and fear of irrelevance in an industry based entirely on sales figures. At the heart of all this is not just finding the alpha-male, but how well colleagues form alliances and who they can really trust.

Act One is a swift introduction to the salesmen at a Chinese restaurant. First, old-hand Shelley begs the officious Office Manager John Williamson for more of the good ‘leads’ to reverse his fortunes and have a hope of making the sales board this month. Next, another two older colleagues discuss the opportunity to sell their knowledge to a rival firm, before finally we meet uber-salesman Ricky ‘Roper’ who demonstrates his easy skill in turning an unsuspecting neighbouring diner into a potential sale. As the curtain rises on Act Two, the office has been burgled and all the men are under suspicion. With their deals and their future hanging in the balance, greed and desperation overcome them.

Seeing this show in preview (so some of these issues may have since been addressed), Sam Yates’s production has made some rather unfortunate early choices which undermine what is a genuinely exciting and powerfully performed second Act. Starting at 7.45pm, Act One is comprised of three very short scenes which together last about 35 minutes, at which point there is an inexplicably long 30-minute interval, before resuming for the final 50 minutes. Having barely had a chance to invest in the characters or their story, it’s pretty ludicrous to give the audience a chance to detach again so soon and for so long, where a straight 90-minute run would suit the work much better and maintain the pace. This may not be helpful to the set-designer or the bar sales, but it would serve the play considerably better.

Similarly, each of the three mini-stories in Act One is separated by the closing of a curtain in which the audience just sits in silence for a minute or so waiting for it to restart – no music, no thought on how to link the scenes more effectively – which makes them very stilted and, again, constantly pulls the audience in and out of the action every few minutes, while the designer’s Chinese restaurant set is charmingly detailed, but lacks any kind of atmosphere; there are no other diners, not a single waiter or chef and not so much as muzak to add a bit of tonality. With such a fine cast, surely the production could afford to hire a few extras to people the background and make it look more like a real Chinese restaurant rather than the set of a Chinese restaurant.

Yet, once the production finally gets to Act Two, the show really begins to take flight, becoming an engaging and dramatic piece of theatre, in which Yates smoothly manages the various comings and goings that facilitate numerous duologues and revelations. It’s a nicely paced and claustrophobic second Act which slowly builds a sense of desperation among the office staff, pursued by an emotionless detective, while each salesman clings desperately to the deals he’s put together. And Yates’s direction ensures that the audience understands what is at stake for each character, giving them distinction as well as forming part of a more widely choreographed series of revelations for the office.

Still best-known as a 90s teenage heart-throb, Christian Slater channels just the right amount of star-quality into leading salesman Ricky Roma, a man so at ease with his own abilities that he can secure sales even when wearily eating in the local Chinese. Slater’s Roma also conveys a duplicitous credibility when selling “dreams” to his customers, appearing sincere to lure them into a contract, and while Act Two proves he can be equally slippery and deceptive to get what he wants, people are drawn to his success.

He has a certainty and sense of unfaltering untouchability that lends confidence to all his interactions with clients and colleagues, but you still see how carefully Roma must walk the line between success and failure, where one false move can ruin everything. Slater brings a real charisma to his scenes and, even in this incredibly talented cast, he more than holds his own, raising the energy-levels with each appearance and utilising his Hollywood appeal to just the right effect.

Stanley Townsend’s Shelley Levine is Roma’s exact opposite, a salesman so down on his luck he can’t close a door, and forced into increasingly desperate behaviour to keep afloat. The play opens with Levine trying to cut a deal with Kris Marshall’s charmless office manager to get better “leads” in return for a big percentage of any contracts he secures. Townsend skilfully grapples with ideas of someone clinging to an idea of the man he used to be, certain he can turn things around if he only had better options – an interesting and engaging mix of pride and failure. In Act Two the alliance he begins to form with Roma offers new possibilities, and for a moment Townsend shows us the salesman Levine could be again in a complex and emotive performance.

There are smaller but nicely shaded roles for Philip Glenister, Don Warrington, Kris Marshall and Daniel Ryan as the remaining office staff and customers. Glenister is a strong presence as Dave Morris, a frustrated employee desperate to leave whose actions set the story in motion, while Warrington’s George Aaronow is the unlikely and guilt-ridden colleague that Dave tries to form an alliance with. Managing them all is Marshall’s emotionless John Williamson, the non-salesman relishing his power to control the distribution of the much-demanded “leads” and forcing the respect of others rather than earning it. Daniel Ryan has a small but pivotal role as Roma’s nervous client unsuspectingly talked into a dream he cannot afford.

In its first West End outing for more than ten years, Mamet’s play feels as topical as ever, smart, sharp and full of dangerous predators fighting for air. With a superb cast led by an on-form Christian Slater, when the performance accelerates in Act Two it’s a pleasure to watch the intricacies of office politics collide with the varying levels of desperation in each of the personalities on display.  With Press Night just a few days away, let’s hope the awkward production choices in Act One that affect the early part of the evening have been overcome, because this revival of Glengarry Glen Ross can still bite.

Glengarry Glenn Ross is at The Playhouse Theatre until 3 February and tickets start at £15, but do note the excessive fees if booking through ATG. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1

American Buffalo – Wyndhams Theatre

It’s not exactly James McAvoy unicycling in his underwear, but watching Damien Lewis sporting a 70s handlebar moustache and wearing a giant paper hat that he’s just made out of newspaper, ranks pretty highly on the list of things I was not expecting to see this year.  American Buffalo has just opened at the Wyndhams and is a sure sign that 2015 is disappearing fast as this marks the fourth of the ‘big five’ performances I earmarked in my Christmas review post. That means we’ve already had 3 months of a serenely comic McAvoy in The Ruling Class; a second stint for much deserved Olivier award winner Mark Strong in the epic A View from the Bridge; Ralph Fiennes is already two months into his brilliant philosophising bachelor in Man and Superman and that brings us up to date with Damien Lewis. The only one left is Cumberbatch’s Hamlet, which although booked long before any of the above, is still several months away. Thank God Kenneth Branagh’s Garrick season is in the bag or the autumn would be looking very grim.

Anyway back to Lewis, who is joined in David Mamet’s American Buffalo by John Goodman and Tom Sturridge in this comedy-drama about three very different men planning a heist. Don (Goodman) owns a junk shop and he’s just undersold a rare coin – the American Buffalo – to a collector, except it wasn’t until afterwards that he realised his mistake. Feeling cheated, he enlisted the help of his young friend Bob (Sturridge) to find the customer’s address and steal his coin collection. As the play opens Bob has found the man and the job is on for tonight. At this point Walter or ‘Teach’ (Lewis), Don’s poker buddy and apparent local gangster, arrives and convinces Don to letting him do the job instead as Bob isn’t the brightest lad. As the three men wait for night to fall they discuss the ways of the world while their greed starts to get the better of them.

Mamet’s play is about the engagement of three very different forms of masculinity, and its central characters could not be more different. Each separated by age, but drawn together under the umbrella of ‘business’, they depict a very particular kind of male friendship – one that isn’t necessarily based on personal interactions or shared experiences, but on a level of trustworthiness. They all live and work in the same area and like colleagues have developed a reliance on one another that on the surface seems quite superficial. They play cards together, eat breakfast in the shop and complain about their friends, but never openly discuss their families, feelings or aspirations. Yet without necessarily realising it they need each other, drawn together by the limitations of their lives, metaphorically trapped in Don’s junk shop with no way out.

John Goodman makes his very welcome West End debut as Don, the pseudo father figure who runs the shop and plans the job. He’s friendly and extremely tolerant of Bob’s inability to grapple with more complex thoughts, caring for him. Initially he doesn’t seem that strong or much of a criminal mastermind, but Goodman brings a quiet authority that somehow makes the others do what he says, even though Teach in particular could overpower him.  Don is the centre of the play, it’s his shop and his heist, card games take place in his place and the others come to him. But Goodman also brings out the anxiety of a man seemingly unused to criminal endeavour to great comic and dramatic effect.

Tom Sturridge has quite a small role as Bob but one he makes the most out of. There is farm-boy quality to Bob, lost in the big city and not quite an adult. Even in the course of this one day, he frequently comes to Don for money and Sturridge cleverly implies that the others have underestimated his ability to grasp what’s going on and act on it. His performance ranges from wide-eyed innocence to a slightly hard-edged need to be recognised / rewarded for what he’s done, and he makes for an interesting contrast to the two more worldly characters.

Teach completes the trio and this is Damien Lewis as you probably haven’t seen him before – the sharp aubergine suit, flares, moustache, and sideburns indicate a man who has a lot of outward confidence, as well as a love of style. A softly spoken American gangster accent pits him somewhere between John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, Christian Bale in American Hustle and a Tarantino character. His arrival onstage alone heralded a peel of laughter from the audience, but Lewis instils Teach with a dangerous quality – he may be calm and compliant among his friends, but you get the feeling that one wrong word and he would brutally lash out. And later in the play you begin to see more of his frustration about being respected come to the fore. Still, it’s interesting that Teach obeys Don and tells you something about the hierarchy operating here which comes across nicely in Lewis’s layered performance, as well as that slightly deluded sense that this man thinks he’s more important or tougher than he really is.

The set and costume designer Paul Willis has had great fun, and once you get used to Lewis’s suit you can marvel at his brilliant version of Don’s junk shop. This feels like a deeply masculine environment, echoing the themes of the play really well. It’s full of bits and pieces all over the floor and stacked around the room, with a feeling of grease and age, so imagine a garage full of old stuff but turned into a shop. Above is a dense canopy of old chairs and bikes suspended from the ceiling to emphasise how confined these men are in their little world – the can never go up because above them there’s even more junk.

American Buffalo is sure to be another hit and will have crowds flocking to see its three lead actors. We may hear about other characters, some of which are even women, but Don, Teach and Bob are drawn together by need disguised as ‘business’. Despite their differences in age, character and attitude, there is also a timeless feel to this production and you know if you came back to them in 10 or 20 years, they’d all still be here, dreaming big but always losing. They may never exactly say what’s on their minds, but they have each other so by the close of Act II you know that whatever words pass between them, however vilely they act to one another, they will always be friends.

American Buffalo is at the Wyndhams Theatre until 27 June. Tickets start at £22.25 for a seat and standing tickets are available from £17.25. For a cheap ticket if you’re going alone or don’t want to sit with your friends, I recommend Seat A1 or A26 in the Balcony – a sideways seat separated from the main block which has a perfect view and a small but private space with no one nearby. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1