About This Show
Suzan-Lori Parks’ fiercely original and compelling Topdog/Underdog, winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, takes center stage at Mixed Blood Theatre. The show, a co-production with The Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C., is directed by Studio artistic director Joy Zinoman and features Thomas W. Jones II and Jahi Kearse.
Infused with the percussive rhythms of three card monte and street poetry, the play is a thrilling comic drama about brotherly love and rivalry. Two brothers–Lincoln and Booth, one a sideshow performer and retired three-card monte con man, the other a would-be street hustler–share a run-down one-room apartment. Abandoned by their parents as teens, each is the only family the other has. Accustomed to life at the edge, this African American duo engages in a dizzying and often humorous battle of wits, hustling each other to the surprising end.
