Suzan-Lori Parks’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play Topdog/Underdog is a tough story of the relations between two brothers, both hustlers in a way, filled with a lifetime of resentments and disappointments. It is a challenging play to put on, but Trenton’s Passage Theatre Company has chosen to stage it as part of their 40th Anniversary season. I urge you to see it.
The play, set in Trenton in the present, tells the stories of Lincoln (Steven St. Pierre) and Booth (Anthony Vaughn Merchant). Lincoln is living with his brother “temporarily” after his wife has thrown him out. After running a three-card monte scam for a while, Lincoln now works in whiteface impersonating Abraham Lincoln at an arcade, where customers get to “shoot” him. Booth, hoping to emulate his brother’s talent at the card game, constantly tries to perfect his own skills as a way to make fast money. Booth also tries to get an extremely reluctant Lincoln to go back to the game.
The brothers bicker and reconcile, knowing they’re all each other has and resenting that fact. Lincoln’s wife slept with Booth after kicking Lincoln out. Lincoln’s innate skill at cards is something to which Booth will never come close, as Booth has an innate skill for shoplifting.
As directed by marcus d. harvey, actors St. Pierre and Merchant circle and taunt each other in a vortex of recrimination and resentment that squeezes the dramatic juice from Parks’ script. You cannot help but watch as these two pit bulls snarl and snap, pushing the limits of their relationship to an inevitable breaking point — a point that comes so quickly and almost unexpectedly that it is shattering in its power.
Scenic designer Anthony Wiegand has created the run-down apartment to end all run-down apartments for the two brothers’ home. With lighting by Danie Taylor and sound and projections by Damien Figueras, the stage becomes the tightly-confined world of Lincoln and Booth in all its tawdry splendor. Special credit goes to fight coordinator Anthony Domingues, turning the brothers’ frequent tussles into near-balletic dances of rage.
Passage Theatre Company has, for most of its life, created plays based on stories taken from real life about Trenton and its people. It is to their credit that they even chose to do Topdog/Underdog, let alone do it in all its messy, gritty, complicated power. This production is a triumph, and I cannot more strongly urge you to see it.
Topdog/Underdog is presented by the Passage Theatre Company at the Mill Hill Theatre in Trenton through Mar. 9, 2025. For more information or to purchase tickets, go to passagetheatre.org.
