Lincoln works at an arcade where he re-enacts the Abraham Lincoln assassination in costume and whiteface. I ain’t apologizing for it.” Lincoln, meanwhile, trudges forlornly through life with absurd humor, fulfilling a parental role as the older sibling by supplying the pair’s food, rent and pocket money.īoth Lincoln and Booth engage with morbid obsession and depersonalization throughout the narrative. Booth copes through braggadocio and by embodying hypermasculinity, seeking to be the security he never felt, saying, “I’m a hot man. As much as Lincoln and Booth bluster and perform for themselves, parental abandonment deeply scars the two. Hawkins’ Lincoln and Mateen’s Booth wind through labyrinthine conversations that devolve through stages of grief, from anecdotes and comedy to the anger and solemnity of bitter, shared trauma. A two-person play, it spotlights bravura performances by Yahya-Abdul Mateen II (“Watchmen,” “Candyman”) and Corey Hawkins ( “The Walking Dead,” “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” “BlacKkKlansman”), who are charismatic and electrifying throughout. “Topdog/Underdog” leverages Lincoln and Booth’s sibling rivalry to incredible effect and features the music of Nipsey Hustle and James Brown, among other musical artists.
This rabbit hole tears apart every seam holding the brothers together and foments the rage, melancholy and mania the two had long suppressed. Nonetheless, insecurity draws Booth into the confidence game of three-card monte. They bicker and revel through their struggles with racism, relationships and money troubles while simultaneously relying on each other to weather these issues. “Topdog/Underdog” follows a pair of Black brothers, Lincoln and Booth, who are haunted and traumatized by their childhood experience they were named Lincoln and Booth by their father as a sadistic joke, abandoned by their parents as minors and left $500 each as an inheritance, Booth’s in a nylon stocking. The original production of Parks’ play opened on Broadway in 2002 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, making her the first African-American woman to receive the award, according to The New York Times. 15, 2023, the show deals with themes of family dysfunctionality, sibling rivalry, poverty, toxic masculinity and the blurry relationship between past and present. Playing at the Golden Theatre through Jan. I had the pleasure of seeing the revival of Suzan-Lori Parks’ “Topdog/Underdog” over Thanksgiving break.
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