Michael Guajardo, Ryil Adamson and Paul Ford

Certainly they are not in this play as three tough guys sit around a table in a junk shop and plan a robbery. The word "savages" occurs frequently, and such is what this trio appears to be. These are not articulate people. Their speeches stop and start, go in circles, leave thoughts hanging, repeat themselves and end up more or less where they began. "Action counts," Donny lectures his confederates, and when the play explodes at the end of the second act, words indeed take a back seat to acts.

The name of the play is taken from a coin, a U.S. nickel minted from 1913 to 1938. It contained numerous errors, more than any other American coinage, according to one numismatic source. Its value to collectors varies radically depending on the year, the condition of the coin and the number and type of errors. A random search discloses current values from $5.25 to $2,250. Values mentioned in the play range between 20 cents and $90.

The plot is total simplicity. Donny, the owner of the junk shop, has sold an American Buffalo nickel to a customer for $90. Now he, along with his young employee Bobby (played by Michael Guajardo) and his confederate Walter nicknamed Teach (played by Ryil Adamson), discuss, debate and plot stealing the nickel back.

But the simplicity is as deceptive as everything else in this play. These bluff, brutal, unsentimental characters whose favorite modes of communication are cursing and screaming turn out to have a very different underside, and this exposure is the heart of Mamet's drama.

The play is an effective piece of witty comedy with a dramatic soul. Often, but not always, Ford plays a softer version of the loud-mouth, cynical and vicious Teach, and he does it well. I wish Adamson had a bit more nuance and a larger repertoire of speech modes, but his bantam strutting and screaming clearly serve the dramatic purpose of creating what the audience is led to believe is a one-dimensional character, thus highlighting his eventual and shocking transformation. In his stage debut, Guajardo makes Bobby, the third co-conspirator, into an entirely believable character, simultaneously naive and manipulative. I hope to see more of this young actor in future productions.

Director Vic Browder and stage manager Amy Bourque have done something magical to the Tricklock Theater space in which Mother Road has been performing. Thousands of junk items are piled up in every available corner, on every shelf, lining every wall space. Old tires and tin pots and dishes and folded chairs and dolls and toys and LP records and books and everything else you can imagine create a tangled, jammed space that skillfully captures the feeling of the imagined junk shop. The shop is so full of stuff there is hardly room for the three actors to move around. Moreover, there is no sharp division between set and audience, except for piles of junk. The audience seated on two sides closely hems in the stage and the actors. The feeling is one of claustrophobia, of a self-contained, disreputable and seedy world hardly enough space to breathe. All in all, it is magnificent.

In an unusually frank and funny director's note, Browder writes: "I have had this play in my back pocket for the last 20 plus years ... It was a reminder, a raging, prolific wake-up call saying, 'Get your shit together Browder, you don't want to end up like these fuck-heads, scraping the bottom.' ... I finally get the opportunity to put this beast of a play up the way I see it—as an homage to all the fuck-ups out there struggling to get out of their own way, always reaching for greatness. I don't think I was ready until now."

American Buffalo continues Thursday-Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. through March 1, 2015, at Tricklock Performance Laboratory, 110 Gold Ave. SW in downtown Albuquerque. For tickets and information call 243-0596 or go to motherroad.org.

Photo: John Maio

--Wally Gordon