Playing out entirely in the cramped, sparsely furnished apartment – impeccably designed by Arnulfo Maldonado for just the barest of transformations when necessary – Topdog/Underdog has been given a terrific production here. The drama, and the laughs, come in watching actors as good as Hawkins and Abdul-Mateen II – guided, of course, by a director as commanding as Leon – as they shift and maneuver for position, never showing their hands until they’re good and ready (and that includes some expert and downright thrilling Three-card Monte: the production credits illusionists Derek DelGaudio and Michael Weber for “Deceptive Practices”).Īnd that’s pretty much it for plot – one brother attempting to convince the other of one thing or another, teasing, arguing, cajoling and joking, resurrecting a sad family history (the two were teenagers when abandoned by their parents) with each sibling having a revelation or two that, deployed at just the right moment, could shatter the other’s tightly constructed memories of the past and hopes for the future. Booth, whose talent for store thievery is more finely developed than his card game, needs Lincoln to rejoin the hustle, but Lincoln wants none of it, having sworn off after watching a friend and crew member shot dead in the street, the victim of one too many swindles.Īs the brothers parry and thrust, each scoring little victories here and there, the play’s title takes on a shifting meaning – a topdog one minute could well be the underdog the next. For Booth, escape is all tied up in Three-card Monte, the street con that his brother once mastered for money and renown. With the brothers subsisting on Lincoln’s meager salary and Booth’s shoplifting skills, dreams for a better life come hard. (Too fantastical? New York’s Coney Island had a “Shoot the Freak” attraction as late as 2010.) Heritage and destiny – to say nothing of humor and drama – collide in this bizarre display that works as both metaphor and reality. In perhaps the most audacious and risky example of Parks’ pointed, go-for-broke sense of humor, the playwright has Lincoln working as an Abraham Lincoln impersonator – in whiteface – at a local arcade, where customers pay to portray the historical Booth and reenact a certain pivotal moment at Ford’s Theatre. Abdul-Mateen II, Hawkins (Photo by Marc J.
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