![]() ![]() ![]() Topdog/Underdog premiered starring Jeffrey Wright and Don Cheadle, then moved to Broadway starring Wright and Mos Def both casts directed by the legendary George C. Leon threads a clever needle there: the visual and aural impact of Arnulfo Maldonado’s plushly bordered setting and Justin Ellington’s fused sound design are rooted in the play’s millennial era. Topdog/Underdog tells the story of two brothers, Lincoln and Booth, who, abandoned by their parents, have had to depend upon each other for survival since they were teenagers. Hence, Topdog/Underdog reveals a topsy-turvy world in which Lincoln and Booth live, a chaotic world that is as dangerous as it is illusory. There’s something few would have the guts to do now, even though Parks’ characters do not have to be race-specific, as the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright has said several times.īut what makes Leon’s new staging notable is how he resists the temptation to bog down his production with the symbolism of Abraham Lincoln mythology, and any other such arcane academia, and focuses instead on making sure we believe that these vulnerable brothers truly exist, right there in the here and now of the United States of America, as Parks describes her physical and temporal settings. I’ve seen “Topdog/Underdog” many times before, including, some 15 years ago, a fabulously daring Chicago pairing with Shepard’s similar “True West” wherein a pair of white actors swapped roles, night-by-night, with a pair of Black actors. ![]()
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