MAURITIUS Northlight Theatre
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It’s hard to imagine Teach and Donnie in American Buffalo rhapsodizing over anything other than the resale value of the rare nickel that gives that Mamet play its title. But in Rebeck’s world, the stamp shop run by the dyspeptic Philip (Gary Houston) is an island of specialized knowledge and fetishistic obsession, where the mere act of touching a unique stamp creates jealousy and tension, and amateurs are held in disdain. Philip won’t even look at the collection brought in by hard-luck Jackie (Anne Adams) unless she can fork over a couple thousand to make it worth his while. It’s his hustling young acolyte, Dennis (Dan Kuhlman), who discovers the value of Jackie’s treasure and, eventually, of the woman herself.
Jackie found the stamp collection in the detritus left behind by her dead mother, whom she nursed for years after her older half sister Mary (Suzanne Lang) either ran away from or was pushed out of the family. (Rebeck is frustratingly vague on the details.) Mary claims the collection, originally assembled by her biological grandfather, as her inheritance; Jackie sees it as her reward for performing her filial duties, and a way off the financial precipice she’s been dangling from for years. Dennis, meanwhile, lures Sterling (Lance Baker)—an intimidating greaseball who nonetheless appreciates the sheer beauty of stamps—into a scheme to buy the collection from Jackie without Mary’s knowledge.
But as long as one doesn’t expect stunning insights or airtight dramaturgical logic, there’s a lot of fun to be had here. Adams is a pugnacious but vulnerable Jackie, and earns Dennis’s admiring assessment of the character as an “interesting girl.” Lang’s irritatingly smug demeanor—which at first reminded me of Samantha Bee’s know-nothing correspondent on The Daily Show—gives her less room to grow. But, despite Rebeck’s skimpy backstory, I felt flashes of sympathy for her Mary as well.
Review
