TOPDOG/UNDERDOG
by Suzan Lori-Parks
Directed by Kenny Leon
John Golden Theatre
Official Website
Reviewed by David Spencer
There’s a lot of symbolism carried by Topdog/Underdog, an acclaimed play in an acclaimed revival at the John Golden theatre. Suzan Lori-Parks’ simple tale of two African-American brothers, in a one-room utility flat in an unidentified city. The younger one, Booth (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is a thief, used to operating out of sight; the older, Lincoln (Corey Hawkins) is–or rather was–a Three Card Monte scam artist, used to operating under intense scrutiny. But the violence of the street, and the shooting death of a former colleague, have caused Lincoln to reconsider his vocation. Now he works in a carnival, dressed as the President who is his namesake. The attraction is: he sits silently in a facsimile of the Ford’s Theatre box…and customers pay to come up behind him, as Booth, fire at his head with blanks, and watch him “die.” (In Ms. Parks’ previous The America Play, a far different black character in another era had the exact same job, and we met him at his place of employ.)
Booth, though, his masculinity needing more validation than his sneaky, secretive profession allows, implores Lincoln to teach him the Monte moves that he just can’t seem to master on his own.
There’s a nice little power seesaw going on, and an interesting dynamic, as the submissive brother begins to find his mojo again and slowly becomes the dominant force…and the black patois, written with great flair by Ms. Parks, is delivered with equal flair by her two virtuoso performers, under the fine direction of the redoubtable Kenny Leon.
Caveats? For me, two:
If the play is exploring a deeper theme about machismo in the inner city, I’ve never quite gotten it. Unless it’s simply accurate portraiture meaning to dramatize how its worst potentiality can be exacerbated by poverty. Though perhaps that’s enough.
And I always get a little tripped up by the notion that younger brother Booth can be as street hip as he seems—and yet, when he challenges his brother to deal against him, have no clue that even the sharpest eagle eye is destined to lose at Three Card Monte. There may be a lot of suckers on the street, but surely the brother of an ex-dealer, who was once part of the act, would have to know it’s a sleight-of-hand ruse, an illusionist’s subterfuge and a scam by definition. (Hell, even I knew that in the ’70s when I was 18 and you could find a Monte game just walking up Broadway.) This has always struck me as a contrived secret for lack of a real one, whose exposure predicates the denouement. A bit of Two Act Monte, if you will.
But that said, watching the boys riff off each other is vastly entertaining; they play their given reality for real stakes, and make the most of the jargon-rich street-poetry. And that seems to be enough as well.