...as any theatre fan can tell you, a great writer is no guarantee of a great production. Some of my unhappiest moments have been spent in a seat in a darkened theatre. When it comes to bad experiences, nothing can quite approach the awfulness of sitting through a truly rotten play... But there are few things in the world more thrilling, more emotionally ravishing than seeing a fantastic play, which combines the intimate pleasures of a great book with the mob thrills of an NFL game.

Last weekend I managed to catch the final performance of Pure Theatre Company’s single summer show: a production of David Mamet’s classic, incendiary drama American Buffalo. Anyone who’s ever worked in the theatre knows — and probably idolizes — David Mamet, who’s made a huge career out of guy-themed, expletive-filled explorations of the vicissitudes of manhood, power games, small-time crooks, and cons of every kind. American Buffalo premiered Off-Broadway in 1976, the same year he produced his play Sexual Perversity in Chicago, which he later adapted for the screen as About Last Night, which almost everyone has seen, since Demi Moore is completely naked in it.

In fact, Mamet’s film screenplays alone lift him into the pantheon of our culture’s most prolific and successful authors: The Untouchables, The Edge, Wag the Dog, Ronin, Heist, and last year’s Spartan among them. And every adult male can probably quote verbatim whole chunks from Mamet’s searing play Glengarry, Glen Ross, which was made into a film in 1992. (“We’re adding a little something to this month’s sales contest. First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired.”)

But as any theatre fan can tell you, a great writer is no guarantee of a great production. Some of my unhappiest moments have been spent in a seat in a darkened theatre. When it comes to bad experiences, nothing can quite approach the awfulness of sitting through a truly rotten play. A mediocre production, by extension, isn’t much better; you may not have been completely miserable, but the feeling you walk away with is the same kind you get from eating a bowl of Wheaties — not much fun, really, but at least it was good for you.

But there are few things in the world more thrilling, more emotionally ravishing than seeing a fantastic play, which combines the intimate pleasures of a great book with the mob thrills of an NFL game. It’s also a completely different sort of high than the one you get from seeing a great movie: there’s no slick editing or special effects, just great acting (and, sometimes, great technical effects) and the knowledge that what’s happening before our eyes is something new, never to be replicated in exactly the same way, and soon it will be lost forever. We feel privileged to be there for this transient, remarkable moment. When we see a great play, that feeling stays with us forever. It rekindles our belief in live theatre as an art form, no matter how many duds we may have endured in the previous year.

Seeing Pure Theatre’s production of American Buffalo was just that kind of sublime experience. Pure co-founder Rodney Rogers was an elemental force as Teach, taking on a role that the greatest actors of our generation have struggled with and brilliantly making it his own. His co-stars, R.W. Smith and David Mandel, were no less on their game. If you missed it — and chances are you did — you missed out on a hell of an evening.

Every theatre in town — Charleston Stage Company, The Village Rep, The Footlight Players, Pure, and a handful of others who mount occasional one-off productions — has its own artistic niche, and there’s great theatre to be seen at them all. Not invariably, but often. If American Buffalo is a harbinger for what the coming season holds for theatre throughout Charleston, it’s going to be a good year indeed.

— Patrick Sharbaugh