Topdog/Underdog at Steppenwolf Theatre thru Nov. 1st

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Topdog/Underdog is a fabulous pressure cooker of a play at Steppenwolf thru Nov 1st! - Review By: Paul Lisnek

*** ½ /4

Topdog/Underdog is a fabulous pressure cooker of a play! 

Suzan-Lori Parks’ has written a Pulitzer Prize winning script that is very funny, intimate and increasingly frightening as the walls close in around two brothers who have inherited far too much history and too few ways out. Steppenwolf Theatre’s riveting production directed by the incomparable Kenny Leon, understands that the play’s power lies not in its striking story of poverty, masculinity and sibling rivalry, but in the underlying love that lives beneath all the sibling’s games, betrayals and egos. 

At the center of this two-actor play are Glenn Davis as Lincoln and Namir Smallwood as Booth, both of whom deliver performances of extraordinary force underlined with desired humanity. They do not simply play brothers; they create a history of two men who have spent their entire lives learning one another’s rhythms, weaknesses, comic routines and most importantly, pressure points. Their brotherly bond is inseparable from their deeply felt antagonism. Every joke is a test or jab. Every personal slight becomes ammunition, and every kindness comes with a cost.

Davis gives Lincoln significant gravity on the stage. Once a gifted three-card monte hustler, Lincoln has tried to leave the street hustle behind for clearly humiliating work as an Abraham Lincoln impersonator whose role is simply to be assassinated over and over each day in a shabby arcade attraction. His Lincoln is frustrated, sensitive and deeply intelligent—a man who knows exactly how the game of life is played, including the game of pretending-- which he is no longer willing to play. Davis lets us see the tension beneath his resistance to return to a life of rejection and the confidence that one good hustle might restore what life has taken from him.

Smallwood’s Booth is vivid and volatile. He is desperate to be seen as a player, a provider and a man’s man, even as everything in his small unraveling world of lies suggests otherwise. Smallwood finds the painful comedy in Booth’s bravado—the swagger, the grand dream, and the confidence that repeatedly collapses in the face of Lincoln’s challenges. But he also reveals raw vulnerability beneath all that bluster. Booth’s jealousy of Lincoln is more than envy; it is tied to his brotherly admiration, parental abandonment and the increasing fear that his brother possesses something he never will. Smallwood makes Booth simultaneously funny, angry, and heartbreaking, sometimes all within the same few lines.

The brothers’ names, Lincoln and Booth, intentionally carry the weight of national history and assumed violence. Yet the focus remains on two specific men – brothers- who negotiate a world that has taught them to measure their own worth through money, masculinity, dominance, and the ability to stay one step ahead of someone else. The tragedy is not that they fail to understand the rules; rather it is that they understand them all too well. 

The production’s finest moments come in the charged silences between the brothers. The three-card monte routine becomes more than a con; it’s their lifeblood and bond representing temptation and power. Lincoln teaches while Booth watches. And the audience watches both of them watching each other; we know that no lesson in this apartment will remain merely a lesson. There will be consequences.

Director Kenny Leon, a seasoned director of actor-centered storytelling, brings a clear, powerful theatric to the production. Leon never overstates the play; he trusts the text and clearly knows he is working with gifted actors who are masters of their craft. 

Steppenwolf’s production of Topdog/Underdog feels both timeless and painfully immediate.. But it is also, at its core, a play about brothers who cannot stop playing a sort of tug of war. Topdog/Underdog is a deeply human tragedy played at the speed of a card trick: mesmerizing, captivating, and impossible to look away from.

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Topdog/Underdog plays at the Steppenwolf Theatre thru November 1st. Tickets can be purchased at: www.Steppenwolf.org