From the editor:

I just finished reading Suzan Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog, which was truly a disappointment. That Topdog/Underdog won a Pulitzer Prize is almost unfathomable, and it implies that modern theatre and drama is headed down a drastically different course than eloquent playwrights such as Chekhov, Arthur Miller, Athol Fugard, Christopher Marlowe, and, of course, William Shakespeare.

Though drama has been revised since Marlowe and Shakespeare, Parks’ play is overtly symbolic, predictable, vulgar, and it unfortunately holds up the stereotypical label of the African American male. Topdog/Underdog is a seriously failed attempt at illustrating the social dysfunctions in America, which Lorraine Hansberry successfully and more eloquently created in her play, A Raisin in the Sun.

Some reviews of the play have hailed Parks’ creativity with the names of her characters, as it has been stated that the name choice of Lincoln and Booth are prophetic. To begin with, the names are not visionary, they are meant to be ironic.  And, in fact, the names of the characters are so blatantly obvious that it nullifies any need for explanation. Historically, Lincoln is the liberator of the blacks and Parks uses Lincoln’s name to question how much freedom black men really have. Of course, Lincoln and Booth are reduced to hustling. For Lincoln, it was when he is fired from his job as an impersonator, and Booth is locked in an endless cycle of violence and poverty. But the irony of the characters names is not reflective upon the author’s brilliance.

Why? Simply because if the play is making it a race issue, which the names imply, then, given that the characters were ostracized and abandoned by their parents, the freedoms and opportunities extended to any person of any race would be extremely restricted.

Also, the rhyme of the dialogue, cited by many, has been noted to enhance Topdog/Underdog’s power (Davis 2004, Denison 2004, Holder 2004). Matthew Murray, though, argued against Parks’ so-called “euphony of Ebonics” (Holder) and stated that the longer speeches of the characters are “painful” rather than emotional or enlightening (Murray). Indeed, much of the dialogue is brutally repetitive. For a case in point, we can look at Booth’s speech in the first scene:

“Watch me close watch me close now: who-see-thuh-red-card-who-see-thuh-red-card? I-see-thuh-red-card. Thuh-red-card-is-thuh-winner. Pick-thuh-red-card-you-pick-uh-winner. Pick-uh-black-card-you-pick-uh-loser. Theres-thuh-loser, yeah, theres-thuh-black-card, theres-thuh-other-loser-and-theres-thuh-red-card, thuh-winner” (Parks 7).

The way the passage is written is a bit difficult to follow, but the excerpt from scene one is repeated on page 8, page 18, page 56, page 57, page 78, page 80, page 95, and page 102. As one reviewer noted, it’s just like James Browns’ song, ‘Talkin’ loud and saying nothin’.

What’s more, any development in the play, other than for pure dramatic purposes, is clearly absent. True, there was the gradual climax of tension developing between the brothers, but given that the names of the brothers are Lincoln and Booth, it was rather disappointing to simply end the play in such a predictable manner—Booth kills Lincoln and there is no amendments made in either Booth’s attitude or his demeanor. Of course Parks purposefully wrote the play in this way to add to the shock value. But, for me, I thought that it would take considerably more talent to change the ending that would be different from the Lincoln/Booth history.

The bottom line is the same theme of social injustice has been tackled again and again and, in nearly all cases, much more eloquently. I do not mean to say that the theme of Topdog/Underdog makes the story trite; the problem with the play is that there is no depth to the characters, and there is no depth to the story. There is only shock value, which has left the audience to reveal in their emotional response upon Lincoln’s death.