This is a show I've been wanting to read or see for some time. I actually bought the script, but haven't read it yet. Go figure. This revival on Broadway seemed like as good a time as any to catch a good production of it. I'd been really impressed with playwright Suzan-Lori Parks' writing when we saw Father Comes Home From the Wars at ACT several years ago, and was curious to read her breakthrough script.
The Play
Yet another Pulitzer Prize winner, from 2002, this script was apparently a huge hit when I was not paying terribly close attention to the theater scene (something about having a toddler...). Maybe it's jut the fact that the title invokes a favorite eatery of mine. In any case, I wanted to see it.
The show is not terribly complex: two actors, playing brothers down on their luck and sharing a shabby apartment. Older brother Lincoln is retired from being a street-corner practitioner of "three-card monte", and now works (ironically) portraying Abraham Lincoln at an arcade where people pay to pretend to assassinate him every day. Younger brother Booth (the names were a joke from their father) has always looked up to Lincoln, but has never really managed much in the way of work skills other than shoplifting, where he apparently has considerable talent. So between Lincoln's take-home pay and Booth's boosting skill, they get by.
Booth believes that he could master running three-card monte, or maybe lure Lincoln back into the game, at least long enough to teach him. And there we have the conflict of the play. Two guys with nothing much going on, looking to get ahead, but without much prospect. Lincoln has an ex-wife, Booth a sometimes girlfriend. But that's about it.
The play itself explores the relationship of the brothers and their attempts to guide each other into something better, maybe. Prospects aren't great. As the brother alternately antagonize and provoke each other, they explore their childhood, parental abandonment, and future prospects.
One aspect of the play that's particularly effective is the brothers' use of colloquial black English.
The Production
As a Broadway revival, the production can attract some pretty high-quality talent, and has done so in the persons of director Kenny Leon and actors Corey Hawkins (Lincoln) and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Booth). Both are highly successful movie and television actors, but they have impressive pedigrees (Julliard and Yale School of Drama, respectively). Although Abdul-Mateen is making his Broadway debut here, the Oakland native appeared on a local stage back in 2012 when he appeared as Ivan Turgenev in Shotgun Player's initial production of Tom Stoppard's Voyage, the first of three plays in The Coast of Utopia. Unfortunately, he then took off to New York and screen fame before he could do the following two years of Coast.
So I was kind of excited to see this show, and it didn't disappoint. Crisp and succinct in a relatively small theater for Broadway, the production manages to give the feel of Booth's cramped, sparse room while still providing space for the brothers to practice their card sharking. Arnulfo Maldonado's set design is simple and effective, with sharp lighting effects designed by Allen Lee Hughes. But the script and the two actors have to carry the weight of the play, and they do so effectively.
Bottom Line
I have to say the script shows its age a bit. Although it's still an effective show, I suspect that today's audiences are a bit more attuned to stage portrayals of young black men, such that featuring two streetwise, sometimes violent, con men might not be the preferred choice. But the quality of the script and performance provides sufficient depth and insight to make this not an exploitation or a reinforcement of the stereotypes, but rather an examination and explanation of what drives these men to behave in the ways they do. So I found it effective.
That said, although I think it's a quality work, I'm not sure how much it adds to the overall discourse today. I'm glad I saw it, and I would recommend it to anyone interested. But as ground-breaking as it seemed twenty years ago, I think today it's just another good play. There's always room for that, and showcasing these two actors is a worthy accomplishment.
The show opened only recently, and runs into at least mid-January.
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