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The Arts Intel Report

Top Dog/Underdog

Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in Topdog/Underdog.

Oct 20 – Nov 30, 2022
252 W 45th St., New York, NY 10036, United States

In 2002, just before she turned 40, the playwright Suzan Lori-Parks became the first Black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The award came for Topdog/Underdog, a play about two Black brothers, Lincoln and Booth. To make money, Lincoln dresses up as Abraham Lincoln on a tourist-heavy boardwalk and gives passersby plastic guns to shoot him. For Lori-Parks, the 16th president was a touchstone, a way to consider the continuing impact of slavery. “Lincoln is the closest thing we have to a mythic figure,” she has said. “Shakespeare had kings and queens that he fashioned into his stories. Lincoln, to me, is one of those.” Twenty years after its Broadway debut, a revival of the hit is at Golden Theater, directed by Kenny Leon. —Jensen Davis

Photo: Marc J. Franklin