Topdog/Underdog

Hilarious and harrowing, Suzan-Lori Parks’s prize-winning play Topdog/Underdog is a darkly comic fable about making the most of the cards you’re dealt.

Impoverished brothers Lincoln and Booth – jokingly named by their deadbeat father after Abraham Lincoln and the man who shot him, stage actor John Wilkes Booth – make money through precarious means: Lincoln as a whiteface Abraham Lincoln impersonator at the arcade and Booth as a card-game hustler. Haunted by their past, sibling rivalry gives way to deeper resentment as they uncover their true history.

Hailed as a great contemporary classic, Topdog/Underdog’s recent Broadway return saw it win a coveted Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play, and celebrated Parks as one of Time Magazine’s Top 100 Most Influential People.

Directed by legend of the stage Bert LaBonté and starring Damon Manns and Ras-Samuel, Topdog/Underdog deftly moves between vaudevillian comedy and tragedy in a single, perfect act.