Playwright: Suzan-Lori Parks
At: Steppenwolf, 1650 N. Halsted
Phone: (312) 335-1650; $42-$52
Runs through: Nov. 2
Topdog/Underdog won the Pulitzer Prize last year, I suppose, because of its big ideas, its grand themes, its relevance to our times. It's a play with a message … and you better listen. Provocative, with a finger on the pulse of the downtrodden, this is a salient portrait of oppression and beaten down dreams. It's a poem for those whom life has stacked the deck against.
And, speaking of cards, Topdog/Underdog is all about the street shill card game of three-card monte. The game is a big metaphor for Suzan-Lori Parks, who is one of the hottest young playwrights in America today. Parks introduces us to two brothers, whom their father named Booth and Lincoln as a joke. Lincoln is the elder, and, at least according to him, once rode high as a three-card monte dealer, stealing the money out from under the noses of his marks during the day, and 'struttin' and ruttin' at night. Things were glorious 'back in the day.' But that time has passed, and now Lincoln is holing up with his younger brother in a low-rent room without running water; Lincoln works by day as his namesake, recreating over and over, the president-who-freed-the-slaves' assassination. Lord, can you smell the irony here? Do you get a whiff of the foreshadowing? Booth is cagey, full of big dreams and big hopes. He's going to become a three card monte dealer himself and break free of the poverty and oppression that have become his companion since he was a child, abandoned by his parents and let loose to make his own miserable way in the world as an uneducated, urban, African-American male. The dreams and hopes of both brothers here are pathetic because we know that like the marks in a game of three card monte, winning is not an option, not ever. And so, when the play comes to its predictable but necessary conclusion, with Booth assassinating Lincoln, we feel the pain and hopelessness of their situation. Parks has shown us that this was a losing pair from the time it was dealt.
As Booth, K. Todd Freeman gives a peerless performance, showing us that the swagger, sexual braggadocio, and schemes writ large are nothing more than a thin, cheap façade, barely masking the hopelessness of his life. David Rainey is superb as Lincoln; here's a subtle performance that touches only lightly on the slight whiff of evil that emanates from this character.
I wish I could say that Topdog/Underdog is a theatrical wonder. But it's a play weighed down too heavily by its own ideas, often at the expense of pacing and storytelling. The whole first act is a situation waiting for story. Parks needs to let us draw our own conclusions a bit more; many times the dialogue lapses into long, yawn-inducing monologues, clobbering us with her message of today's Black male as downtrodden. Parks has to trust her characters more, and show more respect for them. Director Amy Morton, who obviously has done a terrific job handling her two actors, could have picked up the pace a bit with this production. There are moments when the play just stops (Lincoln peeing into a drinking glass, his back to the audience and Lincoln getting undressed alone are two examples of the kind of inertia that needs to be cut).
But, all in all, this is a play whose themes resonate after you leave the theater. Yes, it's too long and the length drags the whole thing down, but Parks' message is powerful. One hopes that one day she will put enough trust in her audience to let them ferret out the message without the necessity of spoon-feeding.
Cain
Playwright: George Gordon, Lord Byron, adapted by Charley Sherman
At: Tinfish Theatre, 4247 N. Lincoln Ave.
Phone: (773) 549-1888; $17.50
Runs through: Nov. 2
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
According to the publicity release, director Charley Sherman—renowned in Chicago for his adaptations of Clive Barker, William Gibson and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—was engaged in research for an original horror story when this 'lost' play by George Gordon, Lord Byron (the Russell Crowe of English literature's Romantic period) came to his attention. What probably attracted Sherman was not the legal ramifications of the world's first murder (Were the culprit's parents—already on probation for the crime of Knowing Too Much—a factor in the homicide? Or did antisocial hallucinations lead him to murder his brother?). Nor was it likely the existential conflict between ambition and humility, the human thirst for greater wisdom vs. the divine insistence on obedience.
No, the aspect of Byron's play most alluring to a fantasy-fiction fan is the episode where Lucifer takes the rebellious lad on an hour-long tour of Eternity, tempting him with the promise of intellectual riches beyond the repressive imaginations of his docile clan. Much care and creativity is invested by the Tinfish tech-team on these scenes, Steve Ommerle's expressionistic scenery, Dan May's exotic lights, and Kyle Irwin's synthesizer-based score combining to render our vision of the cosmos as mysterious and dazzling as our young hero's.
But then, there's the REST of the play—the dry philosophical arguments. the protracted lists of florid euphuisms, the vivid images stolen from Shakespeare, Marlowe and the Greek tragedies. And don't forget the disturbing notion of Cain and Abel's espousals to their female twins—a procreative aberration less problematic, perhaps, at the dawn of humanity when the build-up of recessive genes was not yet hazardous, but still a scurrilous reminder that Byron was rumored to have slept with HIS sibling.
The Tinfish company strives mightily to integrate these contrasting moods, introducing mythic elements and special effects into the earthly scenes. But though Bradley C. Woodard makes a suitably earnest Cain and Tiffany Scott lends depth to Adah, his devoted wife/sibling, what most immediately and comprehensively transcends simple, if well-executed, scholarly curiosity is Caroline Devlin's Lucifer—in this production, a slinky Goth-chick with the vocal prowess and interpretive expertise we expect of a training resume that includes London's Drama Centre and Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum.
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