Topdog/Underdog

Unicorn Theatre continues its 31st season with the regional premiere of Suzan-Lori Parks’ Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Topdog/Underdog, a rhythmic, raw and explosive look at family identity, exploring the challenges African-American males face everyday.

An urban, poetic tragedy, the play is a darkly comic fable of brotherly love capturing a moment in the lives of two brothers, Lincoln and Booth, whose names were given to them by their father as a joke. Lincoln is a former three-card monte scam artist who in an effort to go “straight,” finds a job in an arcade impersonating Abraham Lincoln, while Booth is a master shoplifter who aspires to hustle cards like his brother. Haunted by the past, the brothers are forced to confront the shattering reality of their future as each one struggles against the other to come out “on top” in today’s dog-eat-dog world.