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by Suzan-Lori Parks, directed by Philip Akin

Shaw Festival, Studio Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake

August 6-27, 2011

The Shaw Festival is currently presenting the Canadian premiere of Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2002.  It is a powerful, provocative evening of theatre featuring riveting performances from its two actors, Kevin Hanchard and Nigel Shawn Williams.  This is one of the most important American plays of the past ten years and yet another must-see at the Festival.

Like Sam Shepard’s True West (1980), the play uses two brothers to represent ironically two sides of the American Dream.  In Shepard Austin, the younger, is a Hollywood screenwriter and manufacturer of dreams.  Lee, the older, has been living a life of “freedom” as a thief and drifter.  Topdog/Underdog concerns the inheritance of the African-American male and is therefore is considerably more gritty and more ominous.  Where in Shepard the brothers live in a well-appointed suburban home, in Parks the two live in “a seedily furnished rooming house room”.  In Parks the older brother is the one with a job, while the younger, who lives in his shadow is a thief.  The theme is still freedom and dreams but on a much smaller scale.  The older brother was a master of the game of three-card monte until the murder of a friend put him off the game.  The younger brother who always watched from the sidelines practices the game endlessly but still can’t find the secret that made his brother such a master and may never learn it since his brother has vowed never to touch the cards again. 

While Shepard’s brothers end up in a murderous struggle, Parks takes the matter a symbolic step further.  As a joke the brothers’ father in Parks named the older brother Lincoln and the younger Booth.  In a further irony, Lincoln, the sole breadwinner of the household, earns his money by wearing white face to play Abraham Lincoln at an arcade where people pay for the chance to assassinate the sixteenth president with a cap-gun.  Whereas the brothers in Shepard have a mother still alive if out to lunch, Lincoln and Booth were both abandoned by their parents who separately gave each an inheritance of $500.00 to live on. 

Both Lincoln and Booth are prisoners of the past.  Lincoln literally recreates a past historical event and has sunk into alcoholism to drown his memories of all the pain he caused people who lost all their money playing monte with him.  Booth continually tries to recreate his brother’s card routine thinking that despite his ineptitude it will lead him to fortune and freedom.  He is particularly keen on winning back the affections of his one-time girlfriend Grace, often called “Amazing Grace”, by trying to impress her with clothes or luxury items he’s stolen.  Though Lincoln claims to have seen her, inconsistencies in Booth’s behaviour cause us to wonder if this symbolic Grace actually exists.  Lincoln may despise the confidence game as living off of others’ misery but comes to see it may be the only option he has.  Booth comes to fear that the only thing that gives him any sense of self-worth may in fact be a lie.   

The brothers’ symbolic names plus references to the Cain and Abel story mean we know the story will have a tragic outcome.  That Parks can still make this conclusion so shocking speaks to the freshness of her writing and the depth of her insight.  Philip Akin’s clear perception of her achievement is evident in his incisive, highly nuanced direction and the in the powerhouse performances he has elicited.

Kevin Hanchard’s Booth has his style down pat with all the right moves and puffed up poses but with none of the substance.  Much of the play’s abundant humour comes from his braggadocio and smart-ass remarks, but underneath it Hanchard shows us that Booth is still an innocent, never wanting to admit he can never be as good as his brother or that grace, whether capitalized or not, will never be his.

Nigel Shawn Williams is magnificent at Lincoln, giving us the portrait of a man sunk into himself, trying to convince himself that his work is not a degrading farce, insulting to his race and to history.  Williams shows Lincoln’s alcoholism has already caused the beginnings of a tremor which itself is a sign of how determinedly he has endeavoured to obliterate the past.  Hanchard’s and Williams’ narratives of the obscenities they witnessed as children are chilling.

The main flaw in the production is the set design of Camellia Koo.  Rather than the furnished room described, she gives us a vast abstract space, the floor only partially covered in wooden floor tiles as if the project were abandoned.  She gives the impression that the brothers are not living in a rooming house but squatting in a derelict building.  The large space gives no suggestion of claustrophobia and its abstractness shifts the balance in the play between the real and symbolic too strongly toward the latter.  The venue itself is part of the problem.  The play would have a stronger impact on a smaller stage in a more compact auditorium like the that of the Court House Theatre.

Despite this, the chance to see two such breathtaking performances in such a dazzling play should not be missed, especially by those who don’t live near Toronto.  Those who do live in or near Toronto should know that the same production will be presented there later this year at the Theatre Centre November 24 to December 4.     

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Kevin Hanchard and Nigel Shawn Williams. ©2011 Michael Cooper.

For tickets, visit www.shawfest.com.