It’s Cain versus Abel, brother versus brother, nature versus nurture, dealer versus mark in Suzan-Lori Parks’ power punch of a play Topdog/Underdog, now receiving a formidable revival 20 years after its Broadway premiere and Pulitzer Prize win.
Did Parks’ modern-day Greek tragedy always reach out and grab the audience like Kenny Leon’s production—starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (an Emmy winner for HBO’s Watchmen) and Corey Hawkins (Six Degrees of Separation on Broadway, In the Heights on screen)—does today? The choice of the Golden, one of the smallest Broadway houses with only 800 or so seats, certainly helps. (Two decades ago, the play did get lost in the much larger Ambassador, though it certainly felt at home in its off-Broadway premiere at the Public Theater.) And Arnulfo Maldonado brings all the walls in closer with his wonderfully grotty set, a single run-down room that can barely contain these two grown men let alone their outsize personalities.
Abdul-Mateen and Hawkins play, respectively, brothers named Booth and Lincoln. (The names were apparently their father’s idea of a joke.) They were dealt a bad hand: Their parents deserted them when they were teenagers, leaving them each with $500 cash (their “inheritance,” as the siblings call it). Booth now decides that Three-card Monte is his true calling; he even declares that he’s changing his name to 3-Card.
[Read Sandy MacDonald’s ★★★★★ review here.]
Unfortunately, Booth—sorry, 3-Card!—lacks the gift for the game. When he throws the cards, he knows the talk: “Watch me close watch me close now: who-see-thuh-red-card-who-see-thuh-red-card? I-see-thuh-red-card. Thuh-red-card-is-thuh-winner. Pick-thuh-red-card-you-pick-uh-winner. Pick-uh-black-card-you-pick-uh-loser.” But he pauses and stumbles, working clumsily, knocking a card out of place here and there. He’s like a dancer who keeps looking at his feet. Lincoln, meanwhile, moves his hands with an almost balletic grace. You can’t learn that level of skill; you’re born with it. “Lean in close and watch me now…” he whispers. You can practically feel the entire theater lean in to watch an artist at work.
Not that Booth—3-Card!—doesn’t have skills: He is a master shoplifter. Suits, sneakers, belts, ties, crystal, champagne, even a folding room screen. How the heck did he get out of the store with that? That is impressive. But it’s not a living. And that’s why Booth—3-Card wants to team up with his big bro: “You would throw the cards and I’d be yr Stickman. The one in the crowd who looks like just an innocent passerby, who looks like just another player.… I’d be the one who brings in the crowd, I’d be the one who makes them want to put they money down, you do yr moves and I do mines.”
But Lincoln gave up that hustle long ago, and he’s reluctant to leave his job playing Honest Abe at an arcade. It’s easy work, and so what if he has to wear whiteface and pretend to get assassinated over and over every day? His younger brother is not only unimpressed by the gig, but he’s also creeped out by the costume: “I dont like you wearing that bullshit, that shit that bull that disguise that getup that motherdisfuckinguise anywhere in the vicinity of my humble abode.”
The Lincoln-Booth implications might seem too heavy-handed, or the ending too obvious from the start; if you know anything about our 16th president, you know what’s going to happen. The gun that pops up in the opening scene gives you a pretty good clue as well. Yet the dialogue between the two men positively crackles throughout, and the interplay between Abdul-Mateen and Hawkins—both edgy, raw, hilarious, and real—is razor-sharp. And while it’s clear which is the Topdog and which is the Underdog, you’ll note that they do subtly swap roles throughout the evening. Side note: Is Topdog/Underdog Parks’ best play? Arguably yes. Some might say her wrenching 1996 drama Venus, though I’d pick 2014’s Civil War–set epic Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3).
The production could move a bit quicker. But at least there’s terrific transitional music to cover a couple curiously long scene breaks. Props to sound designer Justin Ellington: All the music in the show is sensational—Nipsey Hussle’s “Grinding All My Life” is an especially good selection—and the pre-show soundtrack is full of bangers. For those of us who love these things, there’s even a curated playlist on Spotify.
Topdog/Underdog opened Oct. 20, 2022, at the Golden Theatre, and runs through Jan. 15, 2023. Tickets and information: topdogunderdog.com
