Underdog broadway5/30/2023 Booth, whose talent for store thievery is more finely developed than his card game, needs Lincoln to rejoin the hustle, but Lincoln wants none of it, having sworn off after watching a friend and crew member shot dead in the street, the victim of one too many swindles.Īs the brothers parry and thrust, each scoring little victories here and there, the play’s title takes on a shifting meaning – a topdog one minute could well be the underdog the next. For Booth, escape is all tied up in Three-card Monte, the street con that his brother once mastered for money and renown. With the brothers subsisting on Lincoln’s meager salary and Booth’s shoplifting skills, dreams for a better life come hard. (Too fantastical? New York’s Coney Island had a “Shoot the Freak” attraction as late as 2010.) Heritage and destiny – to say nothing of humor and drama – collide in this bizarre display that works as both metaphor and reality. In perhaps the most audacious and risky example of Parks’ pointed, go-for-broke sense of humor, the playwright has Lincoln working as an Abraham Lincoln impersonator – in whiteface – at a local arcade, where customers pay to portray the historical Booth and reenact a certain pivotal moment at Ford’s Theatre. Abdul-Mateen II, Hawkins (Photo by Marc J.
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