Topdog/Underdog
Suzan-Lori Parks · 2001
Two Black brothers named Lincoln and Booth share a boarding-house room and hustle three-card monte. Parks won the Pulitzer in 2002, the first Black woman to win it for drama. The play loops American history through a sibling rivalry: identity, con artistry, and the violence coded into the names their father gave them as a joke.
The case against
Name two brothers Lincoln and Booth and the ending is on the marquee; the play spends two hours arriving where the joke already pointed. Parks writes long three-card-monte monologues that need a virtuoso to keep aloft, and on the page the boarding-house claustrophobia turns repetitive: hustle, argument, hustle, argument, gunshot.
Drama · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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