by AMY BARRATT

“What if the neighbours call the police?”

It’s a question I’ve never had cause to ask myself while seated in a theatre watching a play… until last week’s opening night of American Buffalo. The boys in the newly-founded SideMart Equity Coop have staged this 30-year-old David Mamet play such that you believe it’s happening here and now—sideburns notwithstanding.

Here’s the deal: they are using the MainLine Theatre, only their stage is not the stage. They have set up a playing area in what is normally backstage at the MainLine, filled it with junk store furniture, dishes and pictures and, oh yeah, brought in a few seats for spectators.

There was a tingle of excitement in the opening night crowd, partly because, given the membership of this new company—Andrew Shaver, Trent Pardy, Graham Cuthbertson and Patrick Costello—we suspected we were in for something good, and partly because of being thrown off-balance by the setting. You enter the theatre by the back door on St-Dominique, a dark delivery entrance that reminds you that, not long ago, the MainLine Theatre was just another second-floor warehouse; then you climb the metal staircase and straight into Don’s Resale. Apart from being English-only, a sign on the sidewalk advertising said establishment looked perfectly authentic and plausible.

Which brings me back to the neighbours. Since the play is taking place in what is normally backstage, when these actors go offstage, they literally exit the building. (There were a few unexpected laughs when actors who came in obviously wet were asked if they thought it was going to rain). I could easily imagine that Bob (Costello) was actually running to a local dep to pick up coffees in styrofoam cups. And when, near the end of the play, the characters got into a screaming fight out on the stairs, I worried that an alarmed passerby might flag down one of the police cruisers that Teach (Pardy) is always spotting through the venetian blinds.

Despite the obvious American-ness of the text, SideMart has managed to make the play seem perfectly organic in this space. I believed the action would be unfolding in exactly the same way whether the audience was there or not.

American Buffalo is the play that launched Mamet’s career, and spawned a couple of generations of plays and movies about fast-talking small-time crooks. It is less ugly and depressing than later works like Glengarry Glen Ross. As directed by Shaver, this production is very funny, but it’s a humour that comes out of the actors’ complete commitment to their characters, their rhythms. Seedy and profane as it is, it’s a thing of beauty. Don’t miss it.

American Buffalo at Mainline Theatre,
to Dec. 10, 8 p.m., $12, (514) 581-0321

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