![]() ![]() Booth's main occupation seems to be shoplifting, which he does with considerable flair. Once Lincoln was a three-card monte king now his younger, more doltish brother Booth (Cheadle) aspires to the crown. Older brother Lincoln (Wright) works at an arcade, where he dresses up as his namesake and allows patrons to shoot blanks at him. It's a history lesson that Parks doesn't let the audience forget during the play's two acts and inevitable violent conclusion. The characters' first names are Booth and Lincoln, a bad joke perpetrated by their long-absent father. And because they are played by two such charismatic, risk-taking actors as Jeffrey Wright and Don Cheadle, the fisticuffs make for high excitement indeed. ![]() Parks' play, on view at off-Broadway's Public Theater, is quite a feat, a verbal and sometimes physical slugfest between two wary relatives who not only con others but themselves as well. Words that pretty much define the two brothers who populate "Topdog/Underdog," Suzan-Lori Parks' dark, disturbing, often wildly comic riff on a peculiar sibling rivalry. ![]()
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