'Topdog/Underdog' review — with Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, this play shows its lasting power
10 / 10
Back on Broadway in a top-notch new production, Suzan-Lori Parks's 2002 Pulitzer Prize winner, Topdog/Underdog, bubbles over with timeless talking points. The always intriguing playwright reckons with race, identity, fractured families, and the elusive chase for grace. At its core - and right there in the title - the play also concerns power. Someone's always got more of it, and that disparity breeds trouble. For this harrowing and humorous two-hander to reach its full firepower, it takes actors equal in might. Director Kenny Leon has cast a pair of aces who consistently match each other across the tragicomic tone shifts.
.gif?width=300)
