author: Charles Boyington
Is Topdog/Underdog worth seeing at Round House Theatre? That is what you want to know, of course, and the answer is Yes. It is an excellent production of a difficult but truly remarkable script that at times will make you laugh and also, at times, render you incredibly uncomfortable. It is a play that general audiences should definitely see, not just because it is well produced, but because of its story. While not for children under the age of thirteen, young adults would benefit from seeing it.
Written by Suzan-Lori Parks, Topdog/Underdog premiered in 2001 off-Broadway in New York City before transferring to Broadway, where it played for several months. In 2002, Parks received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Outer Critics Circle Award for the play; it received additional awards for the director and cast. In 2023, it won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play.
The two-man show tells the story of two adult Black brothers named Lincoln and Booth whose parents abandoned them when they were respectively aged 16 and 11. After his wife kicks him out, older brother Lincoln (played by Ro Boddie) moves into his younger brother Booth’s one room rental with no kitchen– and a shared bath down the hall. The arrangements are to be temporary, but Lincoln is the only one bringing in money with his job at an arcade where he rather ironically plays Abraham Lincoln in white face and gets shot by customers over and over all day long, every day. The job is degrading, but it is honest work for the former 3 Card Monte hustler.
Booth (played by Yao Dogbe) on the other hand survives by stealing what he needs and longs to make the kind of money at 3 Card Monte that his brother used to make. If only he could convince his older brother to work with him on the streets, he is sure that it would mean life-changing money. Through the course of the play we see a very realistic brotherly relationship between two men who share a troubled history and have limited prospects.
Both Dogbe and Boddie do an amazing job at handling the complex language of the text. There is never a moment that you feel the actor reaching for an emotional moment just out of their grasp, but rather you get to watch the characters, raw and real, drive the action forward with abandon! They both find the humor and reality in the script and embrace it. They live in the moment with amazing consistency, never foreshadowing future events.
The direction of the show feels non-existent, and I mean that in the best possible way. It would be easy to be overhanded with trying to emphasize messages and themes rather than to just sit back and tell the story. When the writing is this skillful, directors don’t need to push and Jamil Jude focuses wisely on keeping things as natural as possible. Overall the pace was excellent and the staging nearly perfect. If I do have an issue, it would be the on-stage costume changes which worked stylistically, but after a while started to feel like an interruption to the flow of the narrative. However, the play ended with great strength and power, incredibly well done!
Parks’ script is a tough drama. We do not often like to think about people who have had to overcome a lot just to survive, especially in America. The playwright does well to include so much humor as to often catch us off guard in those moments that show us how fortunate so many of us are and how unfortunate others can be. The American experience is truly different for each of us. It was jarring at times to realize how quickly a small detail can date a show: the need to use a payphone on the street oddly pulled me out of the moment the few times it was brought up.
The scenic design by Meghan Raham was expertly conceived with fine detail. The costumes by Danielle Preston gave us a great sense of both who these two gentlemen were, and who they wanted to be. Xavier Pierce’s lighting was cleverer than what one might be aware, with subtle changes and little details that helped shape the feel of each scene (and extremely nice effects at the end of the play).
So in all simplicity, go see Topdog/Underdog, it is well worth the price of admission and a show we are lucky to have in our area.
Running Time: Approximately 2 hours and 20 minutes with one intermission
Topdog/Underdog plays through June 23rd 2024 at Round House Theatre— 4545 East-West Highway in Bethesda, MD. For tickets call the box office at 240-644-1100 or purchase them in advance online.
