Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks, which is currently running at Canadian Stage’s Berkeley Street Theatre has garnered impressive accolades since its 2001 New York debut.  It’s won a Pulitzer and been named, in 2018, as “the greatest American play of the last 25 years” by the New York Times.  It’s well written, dramatically well crafted and often very funny but, to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t deeply engaged by it.

The problem I think lies in a combination of two things.  Firstly it belongs to the genre of “dysfunctional people shouting at each other” plays.  Obviously that’s a genre with deep roots in the United States; Tennessee Willians, Eugene O’Neill et al,  It’s just not my thing.  Second, it’s a about people who never had a chance in life.  You know it’s going to end badly whatever happens along the way.  It’s not even as if they are where they are through some unfortunate incident.  They are doomed at birth; before really.  So all the the classical elements of tragedy, except the final denouement are missing which, for me, makes it a bit of a hollow experience.

So what’s it about?  Two African-American brothers; Lincoln and Booth, live in Booth’s single room.  They were abandoned by their parents as teenagers and eke out a living of sorts on the margins.  Booth lives by shoplifting; mostly of luxuries to impress his real or imagined girlfriends.  Lincoln, having left the three card trick business after one of his henchmen was shot and killed, works as a white face imitation Lincoln in an amusement arcade where people pay to reenact his assassination.  Both of them also have serious woman problems which they discuss in graphic terms.  Lincoln loses his job, being replaced by a wax dummy, and Booth is failing spectacularly with Grace, the object of his infatuation, who he eventually shoots.  Lincoln returns briefly to the hustle and makes a packet.  Booth, who throughout has been trying to get Lincoln to go back to the hustle and take him on as part of the gang, gets angry.  It’s one of many incidents in which Booth tries to dominate his older brother who is far too chill to rise to the bait.  They play monte for real and Lincoln wins Booth’s “inheritance” and taunts him about how hopeless he is with the cards.  In a predictable case of nominal determinism Booth shoots Lincoln, rants at him then falls weeping over the corpse.

Sébastian Heins (Lincoln) and Mazin Elsadig (Booth) give terrific performances and are often very funny and on occasion touching.  The designs and direction are well thought out.  The set is a tiny room with a bed and a recliner and not much else and, apart from some coming and going, everything takes place in that confined space adding a degree of claustrophobia.  Tawiah McCarthy, the director, extracts lots of energy and creates real tension between the characters.  The lighting is atmospheric.  All aspects of stagecraft are very well done.  In many ways it’s admirable.

That said, for me, it remains two hours of sometimes striking (Lincoln’s first entrance in full Lincoln gear), sometimes funny (Lincoln practicing dying more dramatically or Booth desperately trying to hide his porn stash when he thinks Grace is coming over) but in the end the tale of two doomed people going to their doom is just too inevitable.

Topdog/Underdog continues at the Berkeley Street Theatre until October 15th.

Photo credits: Dahlia Katz