Pinter without the bus routes

David Mamet is Pinter without the Pinteresque indulgences, the absurdities and obscurities, the pauses, the Number 38 bus routes. American Buffalo, from the 1970s, is one of Mamet’s early triumphs. Don is a junkshop owner who believes a customer cheated him over a rare nickel so he gets his young pal Bob to steal it back. An older friend, Teach, persuades Don to ditch Bob and let him commit the burglary. That’s it. That’s all that happens in this narrow, gripping thriller, which takes the brutal male culture of the Wild West and imports it to the Chicago slums where three lonely outcasts fight desperately for scraps of cash and friendship.

On paper it all sounds grey, miserable and petty. On stage it’s magnificent, multicoloured, vast and tragic. And often hilarious. Quite how Mamet makes us sympathise with these low-IQ deadbeats is hard to fathom. Clearly these are solitary, womanless men, who create a ramshackle ersatz family from their companionships and rivalries.