Suzan-Lori Parks’ Pulitzer Prize-Winning Topdog/Underdog Closes out Palm Beach Dramaworks’ 2022-23 Season with Opening Night May 26
Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog, which won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize in Drama and, in 2018, was voted by The New York Times drama critics as the best play of the last 25 years, closes out Palm Beach Dramaworks’ 2022-23 season. The play opens on May 26 (8pm) and runs through June 11, with specially priced previews on May 24 and 25. Belinda “Be” Boyd directs.
A funny and tragic tale of simmering sibling rivalry, Topdog/Underdog tells the story of African American brothers Lincoln and Booth, who’ve been fending for themselves since their parents abandoned them when they were 16 (Lincoln) and 11. Spiritually wounded and barely scraping by, the brothers, now in their 30s, live together in Booth’s seedy boarding house room. Lincoln, a master of the con game three-card monte, threw in his cards for a “legitimate” job as an Abraham Lincoln impersonator in whiteface and stovepipe hat, making $314 a week at an arcade where customers pretend to shoot the president. Booth, who has an aversion to work and desires only to learn how to become the best three-card monte hustler on the street, wants his brother to teach him the art of the con. The brothers alternately support and disparage each other – often quite hilariously – as they look back at their troubled past and look ahead to an uncertain future.
Topdog/Underdog is a play about a modern-day Cain and Abel, about yet another dysfunctional family. But it is about so much more: Parks didn’t name her characters Lincoln and Booth for nothing. “The play is about the failure of the American Dream,” says Boyd, “and specifically how the failure of the American Dream affects this African American family.”
PBD’s production features George Anthony Richardson (PBD debut) as Lincoln and Jovon Jacobs as Booth. Scenic design is by Seth Howard (PBD debut), costume design is by Brian O’Keefe, lighting design is by Kirk Bookman, and sound design is by Roger Arnold.
Suzan-Lori Parks is the first African-American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Other awards include a MacArthur “Genius” Grant and the prestigious Gish Prize. Theatre includes 365 Days/365 Plays, adaptation of Porgy and Bess (Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical), Father Comes Home from the Wars (Part 1, 2 and 3), The Book of Grace, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom, Venus, Unchain My Heart: The Ray Charles Musical, The America Play, Watch Me Work, In the Blood, White Noise, Sally & Tom, Plays for the Plague Years, and The Harder They Come. Film: Girl 6, The United States vs. Billie Holiday. TV: Genius: Aretha (creator/writer/showrunner). Novel: Getting Mother’s Body. Parks writes songs and fronts her band Sula & The Noise. She credits James Baldwin, her writing teacher and mentor, for starting her on the path of playwriting.
