HOW DO YOU SCREW UP MAMET or 'AMERICAN BUFFALO' ???

... For starters, you hire a comic, a C-list actor (an annoying one at that) and that gawky-lookin' kid who saw dead people in "The Sixth Sense."

Seriously, you take one of the coolest tough-guy plays and you make it a mockery... Robert Falls' Broadway production of "American Buffalo," starring John Leguizamo, Haley Joel Osment and Cedric the Entertainer, perhaps will be headed for a very quick curtain call.

The show opened in New York on Monday -- and if you can imagine, already posted a closing notice -- for this Sunday!!

That would mean the official Broadway run will be one week. One of the shortest runs for a revival in Great White Way history.

The producers have said they'll extend if ticket sales suddenly spike, but that seems hardly likely.

The official plot: The play concerns a team of men, Don, Teach, Bob, and Fletcher (who does not appear in the play, but is referred to), who are conspiring to steal a coin collection from a wealthy man. Don, who owns a junk shop, sold a nickel to a man for much less than what it was worth. Out of revenge, he and his friend-in-training, Bob, plan to steal the man's coin collection after suspecting that he went away for the weekend. Teach, an experienced and misanthropic friend of Don's, persuades Don to release Bob from the job because of what Teach feels is inexperience and potential disloyalty. Towards the end of the play, Bob, out of a need for money, attempts to sell Don a rare nickel, similar to the one Don sold. In a culmination of anger, Teach hits Bob on the head, believing that he stole the coin back and betrayed them. Fletcher, the outside man who never appeared in the play, ends up getting mugged and beaten by thugs. The play ends with the plan called off, and Don and Bob making amends.

The play won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best play of the 1977 season. And lookee who starred in it:



Jon Hamm would have been my choice for the new revival.

This play was also adapted to the screen with Dennis Franz and Dustin Hoffman starred in it.