Chris Jones writes: 'Suzan-Lori Parks’ 'Topdog/Underdog' is a phenomenal two-brother drama, every bit as intense and rich as anything by Sam Shepard and, frankly, as good an American play as most anything written during the last quarter century.'
Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in a revival of Suzan-Lori Parks' play"Topdog/Underdog" at the John Golden Theatre in New York.
But what makes Leon’s new staging notable is how he resists the temptation to bog down his production with the symbolism of Abraham Lincoln mythology, and any other such arcane academia, and focuses instead on making sure we believe that these vulnerable brothers truly exist, right there in the here and now of the United States of America, as Parks describes her physical and temporal settings.
The emotional oomph in this play comes from the brothers’ desperate attempts to find normalcy: to hold down a job, to put on a romantic show for a girl who never arrives, to find a way to care for each other, even though they were taught from birth that familial affection is as phony as the antics of a Three Card Monte shark on the streets of New York. Their shared experience means they can’t quit each other, but they also have one main locus for their frustration.
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