Topdog-Underdog
by
Topdog/Underdog won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for drama and was the number-one choice in last year’s New York Times list of “The 25 Best American Plays Since Angels in America.”
"a haunting, gut-wrenching production…with performances by Deaon Griffin-Pressley and Bryce Michael Wood that tear at your heart while pulling out the ground beneath your feet at the same time.” —The Berkshire Eagle
"AN ELECTRIFYING REVIVAL...Topdog/Underdog cracks across the stage like a thunderclap...a must-see"-TheaterMania (Editor's Pick)
"the most dynamic, artful, affecting performances I’ve seen this season...theatre at its best."-Berkshire On Stage
“REVELATORY...Parks' incisive writing, rhythmic and expertly attuned to nuance and linguistic choices, is given bravura delivery by Griffin-Pressley and Wood, working under the fine-grained direction of Regge Life.” -Albany Times Union.
“an overwhelming piece of riveting drama that is raw, deeply emotional, and must be experienced to be appreciated" -Broadway WorldTwo brothers, Lincoln and Booth, locked in a battle of wits as quick as their game of Three Card Monte, struggle to come to terms with their identity and what history has handed them, even their names. With her trademark explosive language in this powerful Pulitzer Prize winning play, Suzan Lori-Parks explores the deepest of connections, and what it means to be a family of man.
"Family Acts: History, Memory, and Performance in Suzan-Lori Parks's The America Play and Topdog/ Underdog"
Parks's hopeful view of the African American family in The America Play appears to shift in Topdog/ Underdog to a bleak, disturbing vision of familial disruption and devastation in black urban America. Focusing on brothers ironically named Lincoln and Booth, the play anatomizes the social and psychological conflicts that ultimately precipitate fratricide, with Booth replicating the infamous act of his historical counter part. Rather than contradicting her earlier affirmation of the historical black family's strength, however, Parks deploys the metaphor of fratricide to demonstrate that her characters have lost the African American ideal of brotherhood through assimilation into a hierarchical American society. To read the full article, click HERE.
Dawkins, Laura. “Family Acts: History, Memory, and Performance in Suzan-Lori Parks's The America Play and Topdog/ Underdog.” South Atlantic Review, vol. 74, no. 3, 2009, pp. 82–98. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25681396. Accessed 24 Apr. 2020.