In naming the two brothers Lincoln and Booth in her award-winning play Topdog/Underdog, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks telegraphs that right from birth the siblings were set up to be at odds. Abandoned by both their parents at a young age, they are reluctantly thrown together as adults as the play begins.
The two-act play about to open at 4th Wall Theatre Co. won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize in Drama and a 2023 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Drama. 4th Wall calls it a darkly comic fable.
Aaron Brown, the head of Musical Theatre at Texas State University, is directing and says he’s taught this play to his college classes. “The wonderful thing about Suzan-Lori Park’s work is it is layered. There is no clear final moral, final lesson from the play. Really she’s challenging us to find the humanity in these two characters. And that has been what we’re excavating in rehearsals. Who are these people? What leads them to this moment that this audience is witnessing?”
Timothy Eric stars as Lincoln and Brandon Morgan as Booth. Lincoln is living with his younger brother in his apartment after his wife has thrown him out. A President Lincoln impersonator, Lincoln appears in whiteface at a local arcade. Booth doesn’t have a steady job but hopes to become a three-card monte player, although he isn’t as good at it as his brother was.
Director Brown was part of the audition process and while he says they saw a lot of talented actors, “There was something special that Tim and Brandon brought into the room. The amazing thing was, because of my schedule and their schedule — they are prolific in this area, constantly working — so we never got to actually have them read together. I worked with Tim and I worked with Brandon separately. It was a hard choice because we saw a lot of wonderful actors but I think the spirit of Lincoln and Booth resides in Tim and Brandon.
“Luckily when we got to rehearsal, we were right.”
Describing the two characters, Brown says: “Booth he loves the bravado; he loves to be big and has these big dreams and has so much energy, always bouncing up the wall — trying to find a place for all that energy and create the life that he wants. You have Lincoln who has had a life and has sort of lost it. He’s trying to figure out what do you do after you’ve lost the dream? He’s trying to figure out what do you do after loss and bad choices. And when those two come together there’s a sort of imbalance of power.”
In rehearsals, Brown says the two most important points he’s talked with the actors about is the humanity and the why. “We’re all having conversations about ‘Why are you saying that now?’ You all have been living together for months. ‘So why are we having this conversation now?'”
Brown got interested in theater from his time as a youngster “doing silly re-enactments of Bible stories at my church.” The director kept picking Brown to act out something using elements of improv and Brown realized: “I could get the crowd to laugh.” Involved in musical theater in junior high, he says he never looked back after that.
Asked why people should come see Topdog/Underdog, Brown calls it “one of the great American plays.
“The theater is a great place to learn empathy, it’s a great place to learn about someone whose walk of life is totally different that yours and maybe for a little bit understand why they do what they do. It doesn’t mean you always will agree or that these people are perfect, but in a world that can feel, especially now, that not everyone’s voice atters, this play says no matter where you are, no matter who you are, you have a story worth telling.
“You don’t have to be a hero. You don’t have to be a ‘good person’ to have your story told. Many of us are a product of our parents, of our legacy, of our traumas and we’re trying to do the best we can. In this play we see two brothers who are trying to cope with trauma that they never really got to heal from and now as adults what do traumatized adults do when they feel like they’re backed into a corner. We don’t necessarily have to agree with those actions, but we can leave the theater with an understanding of why they did what they did. And maybe hope to create a world in which those aren’t the only options for people we meet in the world today.”
Performances are scheduled for February 14 through March 8 at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays at Spring Street Studios, 1824 Spring Street Studio 101, For more information, call 832-767-4991 or visit 4thwalltheatreco.com. $35-$65.
