A brand new revival of Suzan-Lori Parks’ “Topdog/Underdog,” even one as tepid because the one at Pasadena Playhouse, supplies a chance to replicate on the work’s unusual, eventful historical past.
The play reworked the profession of a playwright who, till that point, had been an Obie-decorated darling of New York’s downtown avant-garde. A author of experimental collages on the manifold nature of the Black expertise, Parks contended in a mode information to her tough, unorthodox early work that “language is a physical act.”
And certainly, phrases in her performs have the power of whirling objects. From the beginning, her revolutionary considering on kind linked her extra to the theatrical traditions of Adrienne Kennedy and Richard Foreman than these of Lorraine Hansberry and August Wilson.
Fairly unexpectedly, “Topdog/Underdog” catapulted Parks to Broadway. When the play received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize, she turned the primary Black girl to obtain the award for drama. The glory hasn’t diminished within the intervening years. In 2018, a panel of New York Instances critics, surveying the good works of American drama since Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America,” ranked “Topdog/Underdog” No. 1 on a listing of 25 performs.
An attention-grabbing footnote to this illustrious historical past is that when the play had its premiere at New York’s Public Theater in 2001, there was nice consternation within the downtown theater group that yet one more Bob Dylan was going electrical. How dare Parks dabble in discernible narrative! Within the extra rarefied reaches of this coterie world, the mainstream embrace of “Topdog/Underdog” implied promoting out.
What was maybe most ironic about this critique was that there’s such a transparent throughline between “Topdog/Underdog” and its predecessors. The notion of a Black man impersonating Abraham Lincoln in an arcade inviting clients to take a shot on the president a la John Wilkes Sales space — an audacious conceit of “Topdog/Underdog” — was tried out by Parks in “The America Play.”
Unquestionably, “Topdog/Underdog” has a extra classical construction than Parks’ work as much as that time. The play revolves round two modern-day brothers, Sales space and Lincoln, whose destiny could also be decided by the names their profoundly neglectful mother and father saddled them with as a joke — a joke with an archetypal punchline.
However the play’s ferocious verbal music — the true engine of the drama — unmistakably bears the linguistic signature of Parks’ adventurous early performs, comparable to “Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom” and “The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World.”
George C. Wolfe, who directed the off-Broadway and Broadway premieres of “Topdog/Underdog,” was a perfect interpreter at this stage of Parks’ profession. A showman who, because the creator of “The Colored Museum,” was absolutely at residence in additional summary realms of playwriting, he knew methods to stability radical theatricality with extra standard storytelling panache.
The enduring vibrancy of “Topdog/Underdog” was obvious to me in a 2012 South Coast Repertory revival that will not have retained the play’s syncopated rhythms however discovered sufficient jazz within the character dynamics to carry us underneath Parks’ spell. A critically heralded 2022 Broadway revival directed by Kenny Leon left little doubt concerning the play’s standing as a twenty first century traditional.
All of this brings me to the most recent manufacturing, directed by Gregg T. Daniel, at Pasadena Playhouse. If I had by no means seen the play earlier than, I is likely to be questioning its pedigree. It’s a lesson in how even refined miscalculations in casting and directing can distort one’s impression of a time-tested work.
I recall a starry revival of “A Doll’s House” a few years in the past that made me wish to dismiss Ibsen’s play as creakily out of date. However then not lengthy after, I noticed the astonishing 1997 Broadway manufacturing, directed by Anthony Web page and starring a blazing Janet McTeer, that compelled me to reverse course and declare Ibsen’s drama an evergreen surprise.
Brandon Gill, left, and Brandon Micheal Corridor in a scene from “Topdog/Underdog,” directed by Gregg T. Daniel.
(Jeff Lorch)
What went mistaken at Pasadena Playhouse? Not the wonderful bodily manufacturing, which creates a theatrical world unto its personal in a fashion evocative of an American Beckett. Tesshi Nakagawa’s basement residence set made me think about an “Endgame” relocated to city slum housing.
The very good lighting designer Jared A. Sayeg, who by the way labored on Alan Mandell’s 2016 manufacturing of “Endgame” on the Kirk Douglas Theatre, endows the scenic image with a painterly aura. The visible precision lifts us right into a heightened aesthetic realm past realism.
The setting concurrently situates the play in a wealthy theatrical historical past. If Athol Fugard’s “Blood Knot” is a forerunner of Parks’ creation, then Tarell Alvin McCraney’s “The Brothers Size” is a direct descendant.
However the manufacturing doesn’t reside as much as its three-dimensional canvas. Brandon Gill as Sales space and Brandon Micheal Corridor as Lincoln are abilities of hanging sensitivity. They bring about a brand new generational sensibility to their characters, embodying a millennial model of Sales space and Lincoln, a milder tack than the Gen X instance of Jeffrey Wright and Mos Def, who starred within the Broadway premiere. (Wright performed reverse Don Cheadle’s Sales space within the play’s off-Broadway launch on the Public Theater.)
The actors tune into the traumatic historical past of the brothers however on the expense of the play’s theatricality. Deserted at a younger age by their mother and father, Sales space and Lincoln are nonetheless caught in survival mode. Their determined dwelling situations — no toilet within the unit and just one mattress — are a relentless reminder of their damaged upbringing. However they act out their previous greater than they brood over it.
The residence belongs to Sales space, who doesn’t work and appears incapable of holding down a job. He’s working towards his slick three-card monte strikes and patter, wanting to select up his brother’s outdated line of labor. Lincoln, who has been in limbo since his spouse dumped him, is making an attempt to hold on to his new job as a Lincoln impersonator on the arcade.
Pretending to get shot won’t appear to be a step up in employment, however Lincoln is relieved to be off the streets. Sales space glamorizes the hustle, however Lincoln lived the hazards. He additionally appreciates being paid to take a seat round all day together with his unsettled ideas. He wants time to place himself again collectively, however time is a luxurious these brothers have by no means been capable of afford.
Gill underplays Sales space’s psychological challenges, maybe forestalling a analysis that would make it simpler for us to distance ourselves from the character. However there’s a tentativeness to the portrayal, a watering down of the fraternal volatility that finally makes Sales space so harmful.
Corridor’s Lincoln wears a sweater within the second act that appears prefer it got here from Saks Fifth Avenue. It’s the one noticeable design misstep in Daniel’s manufacturing, however it displays the character’s need to develop into a part of a world that has at all times appeared able to forsake him.
His three-card monte abilities are storied within the neighborhood, however he’s decided to proceed down the straight and slim. Lincoln’s trajectory is the mirror picture of Sales space’s, however ultimately their paths tragically converge.
The psychology, nonetheless, must be extra boldly theatricalized, and for Parks that inevitably means verbalized. These characters are fluent in three-card monte rap, no playing cards required. The plot is motored by their deft, defiant mouths.
However Daniel doesn’t draw from these fantastic actors the dimensions of efficiency that Parks’ drama calls for. His restrained course retains the brothers in examine and underpowered. As an alternative of a contemporary transforming of the Cain and Abel story, this revival provides one thing extra subdued — a TV film pleading for sympathy.
‘Topdog/Underdog’
The place: Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena
When: 8 p.m. Wednesdays, Fridays, 7 p.m. Thursdays, 2 and eight p.m. Saturdays, 2 and seven p.m. Sundays. Ends March 23
Tickets: Begin at $40
Contact: PasadenaPlayhouse.org or (626) 356-7529
Operating time: 2 hour, 20 minutes