Topdog/Underdog review: Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II are at the top of their games

Topdog/Underdog is not a subtle play.

Before the show starts, the stage is covered in a worn American flag curtain. In a direct reference to ye olde Chekhov's gun principle, a character pulls out a loaded pistol and it goes off before the end of the play. That character is named Booth. His brother is named Lincoln. Without spoiling anything, the inevitable happens, even without the setting of Ford's Theater.

Marc J. Franklin

Top Dog/Underdog is not a subtle play. And that's a good thing. If it were subtle, it would not be as watchable, or entertaining. And for a play that's just two characters monologuing or arguing, while dealing with some heavy issues — race, class, trauma, murder — Top Dog is pretty damn funny.

Suzan-Lori Parks' words sing off the page. Take for example this exchange between Booth and Lincoln over the importance of paying their phone bill:

Booth: She gives you her number and she asks for yrs. You give her yr number. The phone number of yr phone. Hello? Thereby telling her 3 things: 1) you got a phone, that is, you aint no smooth talking smooth dressing phoneless joe; 2) that you is in possession of a telephone and a working telephone number which is to say that you got thuh cash and thuh wherewithal to acquire for yr self the worlds most revolutionary communication apparatus and you together enough to pay yr bills!

Lincoln: Whats 3?

Booth: You give her yr number you telling her that its cool to make contact if she should so please, that is, that you aint got no wife or wife approximation breathing down your neck to tough.

Parks won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Topdog/Underdog, but the play hasn't been produced on Broadway since then. The off-Broadway production starred Don Cheadle and Jeffrey Wright, with the rapper Mos Def replacing Cheadle for the Broadway run. Visually, there's not much to the play; it has one set, a studio apartment that doesn't even have a bathroom, and two characters. But at the time of its debut, Topdog/Underdog was probably unlike anything the notoriously white Great White Way had heard before.

Marc J. Franklin

Topdog/Underdog is the sound of the streets, the sound of hip-hop, the sound of Black poverty Black tragedy, and importantly, Black joy; it's tough, it's gritty, it's lyrical, it's beautiful, it's poetry. And it requires two actors who can do its lyricism justice. For this 20th anniversary production, the play has found its perfect conduits in Corey Hawkins (Straight Outta Compton, In the Heights) and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (HBO's Watchmen, The Matrix Resurrections).

Hawkins is older brother Lincoln, who plays (wait for it) Abe Lincoln in a Times Square tourist attraction in which people get to take turns assassinating him. This is his idea of the straight and narrow ("It's a sit down job. With benefits.") after he gave up his life of hustling three-card monte. Mateen as Booth is the younger, wilder brother, intent on taking up the cards Lincoln left behind.

They are all each other has in this world; their father left one day without warning, giving Lincoln $500 that he was never to tell his brother about, and their mother left a few years later, handing Booth the same amount of money in a rolled up nylon stocking with the same advice. This is their inheritance. Lincoln blows his almost immediately, but Booth holds onto his, refusing to ever even open the nylon.

Marc J. Franklin

Though they are their only family, the brothers have a complex, contentious relationship. Their father gave them their names as a joke. He might as well have called them Cain and Abel, but that's even more obvious than Booth and Lincoln. Still, Hawkins and Mateen have a camaraderie on stage that makes their fraternal bond feel real. Parks' dialogue is intricate and precise but with these two actors it sounds like an overheard conversation taking place between two people who have known each other their entire lives.

That's the result of the ease between Hawkins and Mateen, their playfulness with, and a trust in, one another that gives the audience confidence in the work. There has to be in order for this to succeed. This show requires two strong leads wholly depending on each other. There's no scene-stealing, but rather two equal but opposite forces grappling with their shared trauma, struggling to experience the joy of a life with which they've been saddled, fighting each other for dominance and, moreover, each other's respect and love. Because for these brothers, love — from their parents, for one another — is a battle that only one can win.

Marc J. Franklin

While that may sound like a lofty premise, not a lot happens in Topdog/Underdog. One character comes in, another leaves, a monologue, a fight, some reminisces of the past, and then bang. More than anything, this play is a showcase for the writing and the acting, and it's a brilliant success by both measures. By the time the trigger is pulled on that ominous gun, you're not surprised by the fact of it, but shocked that it did indeed inevitably have to come to this.

Hawkins and Mateen are so likable as brothers, and as performers, that it's a shock things could turn so sour between Lincoln and Booth. That familial love could so easily turn to hate, but the hate was always there, just like the gun, under the surface, ready to go off.

There are hints of this animosity throughout the play, from the way Lincoln shoots Booth stares of resentment, now that he'e been forced to live under his little brother's roof, under his rules. Booth's playful spirit is just one edge of a sword that can turn deadly serious when provoked, even slightly. But from their naming, the abandonment by their parents, and the circumstances of their lives, these characters have to fight their own destinies to survive.

Marc J. Franklin

However, they both lose. Booth implores Lincoln to join him at various stages of the play, to take up the cards with him and together they could run the streets. Maybe if they had faced the world as one, like when they were kids and their parents left, they could have made it. But the years have changed them, changed their dynamic. And once Lincoln tries to reassert his dominance over his little brother, Booth fulfills the destiny their father laid out for them in their names.

It may not be subtle, but at least it's effective. Even after 20 years. A

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