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Karyn Ashby

Top Notch Top Dog/Underdog at Gift



I’ve wanted to see Topdog/Underdog since Suzan-Lori Parks shattered the

opaque white glass ceiling and won a Pulitzer Prize for it in 2002 – a fucking

triumph. I lived in Brooklyn at the time and I remember Mos Def played Booth

when the show moved to Broadway (replacing Don Cheadle, while Jeffrey Wright

continued on as Lincoln), but I wasn’t in the Broadway ticket buying echelon. The

show won a Tony award in 2023 for Best Revival of a Play and a cursory internet

search reveals recent productions around the country.

The set is a one room apartment without running water and a bathroom

somewhere in the building. The characters are two black American brothers

named Booth (Gregory Fenner) and Lincoln (Martel Manning) by their father

because he thought it was funny. Lincoln’s first entrance onstage is haunting. He

appears in literal white face wearing a long wool coat, a top hat, and a fake beard.

Lincoln watches his brother, Booth (who’s had the audience in thrall for quite

some time), and doesn’t speak until Booth sees him. It’s not until Lincoln starts

taking his whiteface makeup off that the otherworldly quality starts to fade. He

only takes it off halfway, though, because Lincoln is a haunted man – haunted by

poverty, abandonment, sexual trauma, and grief. Haunted by his honest, sit-down

job with benefits and a dark side. A job that would pay him more money if he was

white. A job that pays him a pittance compared to the Benjamins he used to make

with his Three-card Monte hustle, when he was at the top of his game.

Booth, in contrast, is full of bravado and idealism – idolizing his brother’s

talent for sleight of hand, yet unable to admit he can’t emulate it. Booth relies on

his skill for theft, his brother’s income, and romantic validation from women,

seemingly less affected by the trauma history he shares with his brother.

Circumstances change. Failure strikes. Topdogs become underdogs,

underdogs become topdogs - the characters weave in and out of these roles - and

yet they are underdogs the whole time, fighting for scraps. Everyone loves an

underdog story - the bootstrap mythology tightly woven into North American

perceived history, but no one actually likes being an underdog. Cruelty and

violence emerge, as they always have, as they often do, as they have been

learned and passed down through generations.


As per The Gift Theatre’s press release, this production “has been a dream

project with roles ensemble members Martel Manning and Gregory Fenner have

wanted to play for years.” It’s truly a gift when actors connect deeply with their

source material and the proof abounds in spades onstage. Stand-outs were

Fenner’s infectious, raw, vibrancy, and I won’t forget a particularly charged

expression on Manning’s face – a pure foreshadow tableau of a broken man (cue

St. Vincent’s song of the same name). Their roles require fierce commitment,

razor focus, and endurance – an acting marathon, with chameleon-like changes in

tone and emotion. When the audience gave them a standing ovation, I could see

the exhaustion and relief in their faces, juxtaposed with well-deserved pride and

joy.

It’s not an easy play to digest, but it is a masterful one, and the heavy

themes are laced with laugh-out-loud moments throughout. In the long-held

tradition of Chicago storefront theater, the production is top notch, no faults to

be found except one’s own in how willing you are to take it in and bear witness.


Topdog/Underdog is playing at Filament Theatre Thursdays through Saturdays at

7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m through October 20 th . There will be an audio

described performance on Saturday, Oct. 12 at 7:30 p.m. and an understudy

performance Saturday, Oct. 19 at 2:30 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at 


For more reviews go to https://www.theatreinchicago.com

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