‘TOPDOG/UNDERDOG’: Corey Hawkins & Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. Photo: Marc J. Franklin.

TOPDOG/UNDERDOG
Written by Suzan-Lori Parks
Directed by Kenny Leon
Through January 15, 2023
John Golden Theatre
252 West 45th Street
(212-239-6200), www.topdogunderdog.com

By David NouNou

Revisiting Suzan-Lori Parks’ 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning play is what could be called a brilliant revival, thanks in large part to Ms. Parks’ rhythmic writing, superb acting by Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, laser focused direction to every detail by Kenny Leon, and a claustrophobic set by Arnulfo Maldonado, bring a sharper focus than I remember from the 2002 version at the sprawling stage of the Ambassador Theatre and looser direction by George C. Wolfe.

As with all brother tales, they all seem to hark back to the biblical story of Cain and Abel. However, in this version it isn’t the proverbial good against the bad brother but the constant shifting in roles brothers play in each other’s lives. The love/hate of who is topdog and who is underdog is always evolving and never gets a resolution.

Witness at the onset Booth (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), practicing his pitch with the three-card Monte hustle atop a cardboard box propped up by two milk cartons, which he hasn’t yet mastered: The language or the movements. Enter older brother Lincoln (Corey Hawkins), his face smeared with white greasepaint, wearing a long black coat, fake beard and a long stove pipe hat dressed as Abe Lincoln, for his new job at the arcade where people can shoot him with cap guns. He has taken this job to leave behind the dangerous life of a three-card Monte conman.

The brothers live in squalor in a small apartment. They were abandoned by their parents when they were teenagers, Booth being 13, and Lincoln being 16. Their parents gave them these ironic names. When each parent left, each parent gave each child $500 to use only for desperate measures. Booth saved his; Lincoln blew it all away immediately. They have depended on each other since they were teenagers; now they are in their 30s. They struggle to make a life; Booth tries to get Linc back into the Monte game and teach him the tricks. Lincoln doesn’t want to go through that again. Thus starts the friction. In this mix, Booth has a fixation on a girl he knew, Grace. He is always waiting for her to come back to him. Connie left Lincoln years ago; she couldn’t take the pressure. The conversation about the girls gets dicey at times.

Here is where Ms. Parks brings the magic into the play. She has set up the scene, and gives the brothers a free reign with her words. Whether the brothers are loving and have fond memories of their earlier years, or are they bitter rivals for a con game. Do they look after each other or do they just play each other? Ms. Parks keeps dishing out the power struggles. This is where, director, Kenny Leon seems to ramp up the flip/flop tension with each progressive scene.

Besides watching the play, the viewer depends heavily on what the actors can deliver, and this I can easily say, you won’t see two better performances this season than from Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. Both of them are cunning and sly, good or bad, topdog or underdog, their performances are absolutely spellbinding and unforgettable.

It won’t take a crystal ball to predict the Tony Award winner for Best Drama Revival of 2023, but it will take one to predict who will win Best Actor in a Drama: Corey Hawkins or Yahya Abdul-Mateen II?

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published October 26, 2022
Reviewed at October 25, 2022 press performance.

‘TOPDOG/UNDERDOG’: Corey Hawkins & Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. Photo: Marc J. Franklin.

‘TOPDOG/UNDERDOG’: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. Photo: Marc J. Franklin.

‘TOPDOG/UNDERDOG’: Corey Hawkins. Photo: Marc J. Franklin.

‘TOPDOG/UNDERDOG’: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. Photo: Marc J. Franklin.

‘TOPDOG/UNDERDOG’: Corey Hawkins & Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. Photo: Marc J. Franklin.

Topdog/Underdog video montage

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‘SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION’: (left to right) Lisa Emery, Michael Countryman, Allison Janney, Ned Eisenberg & John Benjamin Hickey. Photo: Joan Marcus

SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION
Written by John Guare
Directed by Trip Cullman
Ethel Barrymore Theatre
243 West 47th Street, (212-239-6200)
www.sixdegreesbroadway.com

By Scott Harrah

Six Degrees of Separation, just nominated for a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play, is a provocative trip back to early 1990s New York City. Despite some elements that make the show “dated,” playwright John Guare’s drama remains relevant because it has volumes to say about class, race and American society. There is plenty to enjoy in this reboot, including some fine performances, but Trip Cullman’s direction is puzzling and dilutes the tone and theme of the story.

In 1990 (when the show was first produced), New York City was far different from today. David Dinkins was mayor, Times Square was full of X-rated movie houses, crime was rampant, AIDS was ravaging the gay community and race relations were at an all-time low. However, there was, like today, the wealthy and those who wanted an entrée into their privileged world. It is in this posh milieu that we meet the Kittredges: Ouisa (Allison Janney) and husband Flan (John Benjamin Hickey). She’s a socially conscious rich woman; he’s a successful art dealer, and they live in a swank Upper East Side apartment overlooking Central Park.

As the play opens, Ouisa and Flan are talking (sometimes right to the audience) while simultaneously entertaining Geoffrey (Michael Siberry), a super-rich friend from South Africa (during the apartheid era). They are trying to sell their friend a Paul Cézanne painting when they are suddenly interrupted. The doorman (Tony Carlin) brings in a young African American man, Paul (Corey Hawkins, Tony nominated for the role). The guy, dressed in preppie attire, is bleeding from a stab wound and says he knows Ouisa and Flan’s children at Harvard.

The plot thickens as Paul claims he’s the son of actor Sidney Poitier and is in New York to meet his father, purportedly filming a Hollywood musical adaptation of Broadway’s Cats (there are numerous jokes about that show). Paul is a charming young man indeed, cooking for them and regaling the Kittredges with tales of his famous father and a long monologue about Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (supposedly from a thesis he has written). The Kittredges are so spellbound by Paul’s intellectual wit and grace that they lend him money and allow him to spend the night in their daughter’s bedroom.

Of course, Paul is nothing he claims to be, as the Kittredges soon learn when they catch him in bed with a male hustler the next morning. We see how Paul also cons friends of the Kittredges (Lisa Emery and Michael Countryman) and a young couple from Utah.  John Guare supposedly based Six Degrees on the real-life story of a con man who worked his way into upscale Manhattan homes claiming to be Sidney Poitier’s son.

With many stage shows, suspending disbelief is commonplace for audiences, and one must realize this play is 27 years old in order to make sense of the narrative. Of course, in 2017 a quick Google search would show the Kittredges that Paul could not be Mr. Poitier’s son (in real life, Mr. Poitier, now 90, has six daughters but no son). Mr. Guare’s dialogue remains crisp and on target, even if some of the references to blacks seem outmoded in an America that has seen eight years of President Barack Obama come and go, African American activism and the momentum of Black Lives Matter after countless tragedies involving the police.

Unfortunately, once the truth about Paul is revealed, Mr. Guare’s thoughtful and profound story unravels under Trip Cullman’s misguided direction. As other characters in the show expose Paul’s outrageous con, Mr. Cullman has the cast play parts of the story as farce.  For some reason, Mr. Cullman has the Kittredge children shriek and squawk. Is he trying to send up the absurdities of spoiled rich kids? If so, one doubts that was John Guare’s original intent.

Six Degrees of Separation was a seminal play when it debuted. Ouisa’s famous monologue “I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation” still has a Shakespearean grandness to it.  Allison Janney brings a fresh spin to her character, effectively conveying the heartbreaking, “bleeding heart” maternal instinct of Ouisa, but with more of an archness and less of the natural elegance and grit Stockard Channing brought to the part in the 1990 production and 1993 film adaptation, co-starring Will Smith as Paul. John Benjamin Hickey does a fine job as high-strung Flan, and Corey Hawkins has definitely earned his Tony nomination as Paul.

Reviving dramas with key plot elements that make little sense in the 21^st century is tricky business indeed, but can work with the right cast and director. However, this is a period piece and the “dated” elements are not the problem here.  The cast is outstanding here, but director Trip Cullman leaves out the necessary shading and nuance to make this Six Degrees of Separation work by having the actors perform dramatic parts of the show for laughs. Although the show has many funny lines, ultimately Six Degrees should be presented as a tragedy, and Mr. Cullman just misses the mark in all the wrong places. Regardless, John Guare’s slice of early 1990s New York life remains a modern classic.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published May 3, 2017
Reviewed at press performance on May 2, 2017

‘SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION’: Allison Janney & Corey Hawkins. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION’: Allison Janney & John Benjamin Hickey. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION’: (left to right) Corey Hawkins, John Benjamin Hickey, Allison Janney & Michael Siberry. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION’: Allison Janney. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION’: John Benjamin Hickey. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION’: Corey Hawkins. Photo: Joan Marcus

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