BWW Reviews: Life's A Joke: TOPDOG/UNDERDOG at Everyman

For Lincoln (Keyatta Rogers) and Booth (Eric Berryman), players on stage and players in life, life's a pretty poor joke. Literally. Living together in sparse one-room flat in New York City, the two brothers share stories about their upbringing, occasionally humorous, but mostly sad, about as sad as the prospect of being abandoned not by one, but both parents can possibly be.

When asked why their father gave them their famed monikers, Lincoln is forced to admit "he thought it was funny. It was a joke." How that joke plays out, and what it means to two brothers who both love and hate each other simultaneously, is the essence of Suzan-Lori Parks' play, Topdog/Underdog, now at the Everyman Theatre in downtown Baltimore.

There's much that's strangely funny about this play, such as Lincoln's entrance in the first act. Lincoln has embraced his historic name by becoming an Abraham Lincoln impersonator, reliving the moment at Ford's Theater as carnival patrons fire a cap gun at his head over and over again. That's odd enough, but given that Lincoln is African-American and first appears on stage in white-face, a fake beard and stove pipe hat, it's quite comical, yet simultaneously, terribly sad. Who wants to live his life dying every day?

Booth is a fitting example of Thoreau's quote about men leading lives "of quiet desperation," wearing a mask of bravado to cover his pain at being abandoned, by both mother and girlfriend, and having no prospects, save for the possible life as a 3-card monty dealer (and only a trainee in such a position at that) . One difference. Booth is desperate, but not quiet. He makes plenty of noise as he tries to cajole his reluctant brother, once a famed street hustler, to teach him the magic of the cards.

Rogers and Berryman give masterful performances of men who believe life is laughing behind their backs. Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks has developed characters that are both funny and pathetic at the same time...Booth who acts the "ladies' man" but has to find sexual relief through an over-abundant supply of skin magazines...Lincoln, a paradox as a con man who plays "Honest Abe," draws laughs when he must relieve himself in a plastic cup, but how sad is that? A man without even a toilet to call his own.

Lincoln and Booth must face a moment where art becomes too much like history, and the final scene in the play is primal in its pain, singular in its message. It's a the one moment in the play without duality; it is neither funny nor sad, comic, nor strange, but merely tragic, as ultimately these men's lives truly are.

Kudos to director Jennifer L. Nelson and her creative team in the stage they set, complete with projected images of Abraham Lincoln to one side and a black man revealing the Ace of Spades to the audience at the other.

Topdog/Underdog continues its run at the Everyman Theatre at 315 W. Fayette Street, now through May 19^th. For more information, call 410-752-2208 or visit www.everymantheatre.org.