![]() ![]() ![]() Parks’s signature style involves rhythmic dialogue and heightened dialect, which is less overt in Topdog/Underdog than some of her more esoteric works but still evident in its language structure and unique use of punctuation. Topdog/Underdog shows how history, whether personal, familial, or cultural, shapes the present. The final scene ends with Booth cradling his brother’s body and screaming. Booth, in his older brother’s shadow, desperately wants to be a hustler like his brother was and impress his girlfriend, Grace.Īt the end of the play, Booth lives up to his name when, after Lincoln wins his inheritance in a round of three-card monte, Booth shoots Lincoln from behind and kills him. Lincoln used to have a successful illegal career hustling three-card monte and now works as an Abraham Lincoln impersonator at an arcade allowing tourists to reenact the Lincoln assassination by shooting him with blanks. Now in their thirties, the brothers have been on their own since their parents abandoned them when Lincoln was 16 and Booth was 11, leaving them each with a $500 inheritance. ![]() Lincoln and Booth, who are black, are brothers living together in Booth’s tiny apartment after Lincoln’s wife kicked him out. The play takes place over the course of about a week. As Parks describes in her introductory note to the Dramatist Play Service acting edition, “his is a play about family wounds and healing. ![]()
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