![]() He lost his drive for it and now dresses up as Abraham Lincoln in whiteface at an amusement arcade where people pay to shoot him in the head with a prop gun. Years earlier, Lincoln was gleefully fleecing tourists and an assortment of gullible shills thru his card skills. Lincoln has been staying with Booth since he broke up with his girlfriend, Cookie. He has hopes of bettering himself and marrying his girlfriend Grace, by becoming a star Three-card Monte master like his older brother Lincoln was. He’s unemployed and ekes out a living from shop lifting. ![]() Set “Here” and taking place “Now,” we meet two brothers who were abandoned by their parents as teenagers, each was given a $500 “inheritance.” We are at Booth’s dilapidated one-room apartment with a bathroom in the hall. Parks uses shades of Samuel Beckett’s absurdism, Sam Shepard’s intensity and David Mamet’s realism to tell her shattering tale. The play dramatizes the timeless oppression against and forced self-destructiveness of Black men inherent in U.S. The dialogue is a blend of the poetic and the vernacular, the characters are flavorfully drawn, and the plotting over two acts is leisurely yet has momentum. ![]() Parks’ command of dramatic writing here is remarkable. The greatness of playwright Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog is affirmed by this searing revival, 20 years after it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |