Do you smell smoke? On Spring Street can you see the flames? The heat rises from 4th Wall Theatre Company as Susan Lori-Parks’ Topdog/Underdog (2001) combusts. This magnificent production blisters the paint. And probably your skin.
This Pulitzer and, later, Tony Revival winner is a two-hander. Family dysfunction is a major theme that has swirled through the history of theater since the House of Atreus. Lori-Parks plants her dissection in the decrepit apartment of Booth (Brandon J. Morgan) who allows elder brother Lincoln (Timothy Eric) to move in temporarily after his wife has thrown him out and taken another lover. Both brothers are Black, desperate, living on the edge, losers.
Booth is the hothead, constantly bragging of his sexual prowess with his girlfriend Grace. He protests too much, for we don’t believe him. Lincoln doesn’t either, but keeps his opinions close to his vest. Booth “boosters”– as he boasts, “steals generously.” In a comic sequence, he peels off his clothes to reveal two outer coats, two shirts, two belts, two suits, two ties, two pairs of shoes. He gives one set of these hot goods to Lincoln. What Booth really desires is to be like Lincoln, or what Lincoln once was: a master card hustler, fleecing the tourists and city slickers. But he doesn’t have the hands or the moves. He wants Lincoln to teach him the basics, the finesse.
Lincoln will have none of it. He won’t touch cards, he protests, even under his brother’s annoying prodding. He was once the ace of three-card monte scoundrels, the master street hustler. But after one of his crew was killed during a game that went south, he went straight. Now he works in an arcade for minimum wage, portraying Abraham Lincoln (in white face, whiskers, and stovepipe hat) who is assassinated by customers using blanks. It’s demeaning but still a job.
These two characters portray the American Dream turned on its head and kicked unconscious. For these two, there’s no way out. It’s only downhill. Family history has paralyzed the brothers. As a joke, Dad named them Lincoln and Booth, but the joke has taken its toll. Both Dad and Mom ran off when the boys were teens, so their memories include a house with a backyard littered with trash and, more tangible, each an individual inheritance of $500.
Lincoln spent his stash years ago; Booth hasn’t touched his. It remains tied up in mom’s stocking. The money will be the cause of the play’s devastating denouement, although the brothers’ clash has been building from the start. They curse, haggle, argue, and reminisce like siblings do, but in this particular atmosphere of ruin, poverty, and nowhere-to-run, the battle is inevitable.
Both actors are at the pinnacle of their careers, if that’s possible for they are both still young and extremely vibrant. Watch Morgan fume like Vesuvius or comically hump the stolen bathrobe he expects to give Grace, who stands him up. Morgan’s on the go, nervous, jumpy, amped up. He wants to get out, but can’t. He doesn’t know how. But he has a gun. And you know what Chekhov famously said about brandishing a gun.
Eric is wound up, ready to spring. He, too, has volcanic power, but look as his shoulders slump when he collapses in the ratty easy chair after a day at the arcade. He’s spent and defeated with a life that has dealt him the worst hand. He’s too smart for all this, so he plays it cool until the outside world and his little brother beat him down
But Lori-Parks keeps these guys on an oblique path, saying what they mean when they intend to sting, or not really knowing why they’re saying anything at all. Topdog’s infused with profanity, steeped in street talk, and a kind of poetry that comes at you sideways and startles with a slap. It’s easy and jazzy, wise and conversational. She discloses only what she wants us to know at the time. Slight of hand is a hallmark. She’ll explain in time when she’s good and ready. Topdog is its own three-card monte play.
Like the exceptional actors, the drama contains multitudes. There are undercurrents of toxic masculinity, economics, family dysfunction, jealousy, brotherly love, retribution, mendacity, violence. It’s American history viewed through a scratched lens, but we’re so close we can barely see it. As Parks has Lincoln say, “People are funny. They like it [history] to unfold the way they folded it up. Neatly like a book. Not raggedy and bloody and screaming.”
Topdog/Underdog has been hailed as the best drama since Angels in America. It’s certainly finely crafted, an actor’s grand playground, and an ironic comment on the American scene, past and present. It packs a gut punch and is a contemporary type of melodrama. We relate to these sad sacks. Under the pitch-perfect direction from Aaron Brown, the cheap and abused apartment set by Nicholas Graves, and the expertly etched characters limed so completely by Morgan and Eric, Susan Lori-Parks gives us an intimate America drama that sparks and catches fire, whose embers fly far. Can you smell the smoke?
Topdog/Underdog continues through March 15 at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; and 3 p.m. Sundays at 4th Wall Theatre Co. at 1824 Spring Street, Studio 101. For more information, call 832-767-4991 or visit 4thwalltheatreco.com. $35-$65.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
