Topdog/underdog

"2002 Pulitzer Prize Winner" It blares out from the bright orange cover of Suzan-Lori Parks' Topdog/underdog: "This play is important. This play is historic. This play is recognized."

Makes it hard to judge honestly, doesn't it? It sets the tone for the discussion, it becomes the bar by which the play is considered: it is award-worthy, or it isn't. I can either confirm that it is deserving of the recognition, or take it to task. It's hard to come at the play neutrally and see through the golden haze of the award.

There's a whole lot of theme here, a heavy load of concepts and leitmotifs and woven plot threads. Starting from the initial images of three-card monte and a black man who plays Abraham Lincoln in whiteface, two brothers fight over their meager existence, while a criminal past haunts and teases them. Lincoln left the con before he ended up dead, but the cards seduce him back, with the inevitable result. (Did I mention that Lincoln's brother is named Booth? Need any more literary foreshadowing?) In a thrilling end, it hits the something like the same note as The Usual Suspects: the whole thing's a con. Theme and plot come together, and it's electric. There's a heady mix of identity and family and the weight of the past and the greater weight of the present. There's no doubt it's a dense and thorny literary piece, deserving of recognition as such.

But is it a good piece of theater? Do the characters change? Is there any journey? The characters certainly act: there is a crescendo of action, and the status quo is irrevocably altered. But the seeds of that climax don't grow organically out of the events on the stage. It is largely external, unseen actions that impel the bloody conclusion instead of change driven by the action we do see. There's a feeling of inexorable inevitability about it all, like Greek tragedy ... but we're robbed of seeing it trigger onstage. It's almost as if it could have been 90 minutes shorter, because the characters we meet at the beginning are simmering with the same resentments that drive the ending, only missing the spark of the offstage events to set them aflame.

Sometimes it's pedantic and old-fashioned to insist on traditional dramaturgy, but it's a simple fact of the theatre: we've given our time and attention and shouldn't be shortchanged by an experience that tells us that very time and attention was worth nothing because what really matters is unseen. It's a limitation of a two-character, one-set piece: The influence of the outside world (and make no mistake, societal forces drive this play) becomes limited to reportage. I imagine it's a play that you could "act the shit out of" (to use a highly technical term), and wish I had seen the People Productions run in 2007. But literary themes and great acting material aren't all there is to a great play. It's a "good" play - perhaps a "very good" one - but the amount of narrative action means it can't be a "great" one. I realize I'm criticizing a play that I otherwise might have appreciated, sans Pulitzer ... but there you are. It makes me look harder when someone tells me what I should think.

The play's a theatrical three card monte: watch all you want and be dazzled by the flash ... but you will never see what's really going on.