Twenty years after it first arrived to shake up a complacent Broadway and make a Pulitzer Prize winner of its author Suzan-Lori Parks, Topdog/Underdog has lost none of its vitality and power and cu…
) and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II tear into this play with a force that captivates from start to finish. Like the Three-card Monte sharks they portray, the actors are in full control, pacing their game and teasing out buried histories, secrets and longings with all the grace of a master illusionist.They play brothers Lincoln and Booth – named by their father as a cruel joke, just one among many lifelong burdens the sons inherit.
With the brothers subsisting on Lincoln’s meager salary and Booth’s shoplifting skills, dreams for a better life come hard. For Booth, escape is all tied up in Three-card Monte, the street con that his brother once mastered for money and renown.
As 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. 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’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 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.
Playing out entirely in the cramped, sparsely furnished apartment – impeccably designed by Arnulfo Maldonado for just the barest of transformations when necessary –has been given a terrific production here.
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