Topdog/Underdog on Broadway Tickets

By: Suzan-Lori Parks
Director: Kenny Leon
Cast list: Corey Hawkins (as Lincoln), Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (as Booth)
Design: Arnulfo Maldonado
Costume: Dede Ayite
Lighting: Allen Lee Hughes
Sound: Justin Ellington

Topdog/Underdog is a play about Lincoln and Booth, named after the 16th president and his assassin. Their father chose these names as a joke, but Lincoln ends up becoming an Abraham Lincoln impersonator at an arcade.

Lincoln used to run the street con Three-card monte, and wannabe pro Booth pressures him to get back in the game. Lincoln refuses, and brotherly quibbling gives way to real resentment as they rehash old wounds.

Topdog/Underdog had its world premiere at The Public Theater in 2001, starring Jeffrey Wright as Lincoln and Don Cheadle as Booth. Parks won an Outer Critics Circle Award, and Wright and director George C. Wolfe won Obie Awards. Topdog/Underdog transferred to Broadway the next year, with rapper Mos Def as Booth.

The original 2002 Broadway production received widespread praise and two Tony Award nominations, including Best Play. Parks also became the first Black woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Suzan-Lori Parks’s shows include The America Play, Urban Zulu Mambo, Fucking A, and the Pulitzer-nominated Father Comes Home From the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3 and In the Blood. Her work is most often seen at The Public Theater, where she was the master writer chair.

Topdog/Underdog is the only one of Parks’s plays to appear on Broadway. She also wrote the book for the 2012 Broadway musical adaptation of The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess.

What to Watch For

• The production marks the 20th anniversary of Topdog/Underdog, which had its Broadway premiere in 2002.
• Topdog/Underdog is a loose variation on the biblical legend of Cain and Abel, the human race's first brothers according to the Bible.
• The character of Lincoln is a variation on a character from Parks’s earlier work The America Play. That show features a Black gravedigger whose second job is as a Lincoln impersonator, and he charges a penny to let people reenact the president's assassination with him.
• A Topdog/Underdog companion album was released in 2002. In addition to original music from Mos Def and Jeffrey Wright, the album includes music by DMX, James Brown, Wu-Tang Clan, and more.
• Corey Hawkins has been on Broadway twice before, receiving a Tony nomination for Six Degrees of Separation. He more recently appeared in the big screen adaptations of In the Heights and The Tragedy of Macbeth. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is making his Broadway debut in Topdog/Underdog. He's best known for his Emmy-winning performance in HBO's Watchmen.
• Suzan-Lori Parks is busy this season. In addition to Topdog/Underdog on Broadway, her shows Plays for a Plague Year (a compilation of works she wrote during the pandemic) and The Harder They Come (a new musical) are going up off Broadway at The Public Theater.