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STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK A contemporary look at the age-old lesson of Cain and Abel comes to life at The Spot this week when “Topdog/Underdog” takes the stage. The riveting Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Suzan-Lori Parks starts on Thursday, April 9, and runs through Sunday, April 19. “Topdog/Underdog” has been on The Spot’s dream list since the theater company opened in 2015.
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Sabrina Barini and Roney Jones are co-director “Topdog/Underdog” for The Spot.
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“It’s explosive. memorable, funny and important,” said The Spot’s Yanna Lantz. “It leaves you thinking for weeks after and it’s a tour de force for actors, a play that shows off their skills.” Marshall Mabry IV plays Lincoln, a young Black man who impersonates a whiteface Abraham Lincoln at an arcade where mostly white people shoot at him. Chi Mancho, who has had roles in such TV shows as “Law & Order” and “FBI,” plays his younger brother Booth, who has a talent for shoplifting. And, yes, their father named them Lincoln and Booth as a joke before abandoning them.
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Brothers Lincoln and booth’s tiny apartment room could easily be a boxing ring. But, never fear, the play is funny, and it’s guaranteed to make you walk out of the theater a different person.
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Lincoln has moved in with his younger brother after being kicked out by his wife. And he provides their only source of income with his arcade job. But Booth is striving towards upward mobility, trying to close the gap between the haves and the have nots, aka the top dogs and underdogs, by mastering three-card-monte, a street con game where bettors try to guess which card is the red card. And he’s trying to get his brother, who was a rock star at it, to get back in the game, which he practices on the cardboard table in their flat. But Lincoln wants nothing to do with it after seeing one of his sidekicks killed. Booth is also chasing a woman, albeit not quite as successfully as he would like.
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Lincoln shows off his con game card skills.
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“She’s in love with me. But she don’t know it yet,” he says. “There ain’t no man who can love her the way I can.” The play delves into themes of brotherhood, family and the struggle for identity and survival as the brothers grapple with their troubled upbringings, poverty and racism. The play premiered in 2001 off-Broadway before opening on Broadway the following year. In addition to its Pulitzer Prize, it received an Outer Critics Circle Award and in 2023 won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play. On the surface the brothers appear to be losers, begging the question: Why should we care about them? But audiences will fall in love with them immediately as they’re funny and witty, said Yantz.
“You will leave the play differently than when you started it,” promised Mabry IV. “This is a Cain and Abel tale about two brothers, one of whom has brought into the American dream and what comes along with it and the other, the reverse of that in every way. And it represents both sides of what’s happening across America right now and all the things it means to be American.” “We explore how one brother is more responsible and the other more idealistic—a dreamer,” added Mancho. “They’ve been dealt a bad hand and they’re trying to make something out of it.” This is Mancho’s stage debut. “I thought I would have a smaller role to get my feet wet, but here I am. Acting on stage is a different medium, one that makes sense of the whole role compared to TV where you say a couple lines and they yell, ‘Cut!’ I saw this on Broadway two years ago and it’s an artist’s challenge.”
Directors Savina Barini of Washington, D.C., and Roney Jones of New Orleans are co-directing the play after having directed “Passover” for The Spot in 2022. It was Barini, who spent a couple years in the Wood River Valley during which she took part in “Pippin” and “Carousel,” who proposed that it was time for The Spot to stage “Topdog/Underdog.” “It’s rich, really gorgeous. There are no fancy props –these two young men are gonna rock for two hours. And the play asks important questions, such as how much is the individual in control and how much of a role do circumstances play in our lives,” she said. Having two directors is a luxury. But, said Jones, “We have created a very shared language since our first collaboration in school at Howard University. “When we first started, having a second person there to affirm us was so helpful.”
Barini added that she tends to get caught up in the big overarching context of a play, while Jones grounds her figuring out what is most relevant and how to synthesizes things into something tangible. “We sharpen each other,” Jones said. The two will consider this latest collaboration a success if they can stretch the audience’s empathy. “You come here and we’re going to work your empathy muscle,” Barini said. And, when you leave, your empathy muscle is much longer. So much so that you will look at situations like this and see things differently.”
“Topdog/Underdog” starts at 7 p.m. April 9-11, April 16-18. It starts at 4 p.m. Sunday, April 12 and 6 p.m. Sunday, April 19, at The Spot, 220 Lewis St. in Ketchum. Tickets start at $20 for students and those under 30 with standard tickets $35 and premium floor tickets $40. Tickets are available at https://ci.ovationtix.com/35975/production/1269724 The play is recommended for those ages 16 and older.
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