The Oakland Tribune, June 14, 1993
Laird Harrison

"For American Buffalo, playwright David Mamet put culture on a burner. He boiled away all the social nicety, all elegance and pretension to obtain a distillation of human nature.

Three men in a junk shop, over the course of 90 minutes, run through the gamut of conflicting greed and anger, love and compassion that define most relationships.

You get that much from the new production of Mamet's 1977 play by Berkeley's Shotgun Players. The actors strike the right rhythm and style for Mamet's gritty dialogue. Unfortunately, they rush through it at such breakneck speed that the show never becomes truly absorbing.

...In this production, George Killingworth plays Don as sly and cautious. His gray-bearded smile gives him an air of experienced cool, but gradually we become aware of his constant nervous fidgeting.

Ray Halliday relies mostly on vacant stares in his simplistic but effective portrayal of Bobby. You can almost see through the poor boy's empty head.

From the moment he appears on stage, Patrick Dooley powers through the role of Teach, his skinny figure radiating tension through his leather jacket and worn-out shoes as he paces, curses and wheels around the junk shop floor. But Dooley looks a little young for the role of a weathered thief, and his long-in-front hairstyle is too contemporary.

Director Trick Redman needs to slow this show down. Dooley sometimes speaks too fast to be understood, and he shows so much violence from the outset that he doesn't leave room for a bang at the climax.

Killingworth gets so rushes in making telephone calls that he forgets to listen for a ring and a 'hello' before he starts talking.

At least that's how it happened on opening night. Maybe these players will settle down in their next few performances and give their audience a chance to sink into the seamy, beautiful world of Mamet's junk shop."

East Bay Express, July 23, 1993
Steve Hayes-Pollard

"Barely catching a breath, this vigorous young company has rolled from two Mamet one-acts into his two-act slice of lowlife about three junkstore bad boys. And while this is a vigorous show, the haste shows. Mamet at his best can make Pinter sound literal-minded. It's not what's said, but what's not said, or, even trickier, what's thought. While George Killingworth as Don, Patrick Dooley as Teach, and Ray Halliday as Bobby all bring a definite liveliness to their roles, too often what they say goes unpunctuated, uninflected by those tiny but vital signs of inner life. What's significant has no significance beyond itself, and Mamet is reduced to being a purveyor of curiously attractive, remarkably verisimilar, unquestionably repugnant misogyny. Though only persuaded of it lately, I for one believe him to be of more significance than that. But then, why not decide for yourself? This is a lively production, and Mamet's work can be as compelling as it is repellent."