American Buffalo, Wyndham's Theatre, London - review

It's 40 years since David Mamet's American Buffalo made the playwright's name and this bitter, tragicomic power scuffle between three small-time crooks, literally on the scrap-heap in the junk shop setting, has lost none of its punch. Just as the three men hope to, Mamet turns cast-offs into gold, crafting a brilliant, angry, touching play out of a hopeless scenario and three wonderful, rich characters out of what society would deem no-hopers. It seems as topical as ever in a world that, if anything, grows more unequal and divided.

Daniel Evans' major revival honours this by bringing together three superb actors: Damian Lewis, John Goodman and Tom Sturridge. They deliver beautifully detailed, astutely observed performances in a staging full of nuanced psychological insights. And yet this production doesn't quite fire on all cylinders: it's somehow too self-conscious. It's hard to forget that you are watching a classy staging of a seminal play, rather than three lonely, inarticulate men grubbing towards some sort of mutual care.

Paul Wills' set expresses the scale and metaphorical reach of the play, with the fabulously cluttered junk shop reaching into a teeming cloud of suspended detritus that seems to symbolise the weight of lost dreams bearing down on the men. Meanwhile the men's three different versions of desperation are precisely expressed in the body language of the cast as their characters squabble over their roles in a minor heist.

Sturridge's damaged, jittery, shaven-headed Bob looks like a plant left too long in the dark: fragile, pale, unlikely to thrive. Despite Don's best efforts to protect him, it's clear that Bob will never turn the corner or make it to old age. By contrast Lewis's Teach, the practised hustler who wants in on the job, is all ferrety energy, false confidence and empty noise. Lewis is very funny, bursting into the shop, commanding the floor in his lurid aubergine suit and ostentatious moustache and surfing Teach's angry tirades, needling logic and beady suspicion expertly. But he doesn't quite convince you of the desperation behind his man's charade.

It's Goodman, as Don, the shop owner, who gives the outstanding performance of the evening: quiet, sad, unshowy, his very bulk seeming to sit on him like the decades of disappointment. His gruff efforts to save Bob, his tormented betrayal of him and his increasing panic are really touching in a staging that may yet grow into its full potential.

To June 27, americanbuffalotheplay.com

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