Setting

American Buffalo takes place m Don's Resale Shop, a secondhand "antique" store (really a junk store) run by Don Dubrow. Although Mamet's script never describes the set in any detail, the play's scenic designers have always made a point of filling the stage with as much junk as possible: Clive Barnes (writing for the New York Times') called the Broadway set "astonishing" and described it as "an agglomeration of trash that must have taken a team of assistants months to acquire." This same praise was even offered by critics who found fault with the play itself. For example, writing for the Wall Street Journal, Edwin Wilson found the play "not heavy enough" but the set to be a "triumph of clutter." The set, therefore, serves as a way for a viewer to instantly create some assumptions about the characters, specifically, that they are lower class, small-time "businessmen...