Critical Overview
Les Gutman, reviewing the original Off-Broadway production for the Internet theater magazine CurtainUp, observes that, “with Topdog/Underdog, [Suzan-Lori Parks] has taken a giant step toward fulfilling the promise with which she was labeled.” He finds the narrative “linear and quite straightforward” compared to some of Parks’s earlier plays, which have been regarded by critics and audiences alike as rather “meditative and inaccessible.” Gutman views Topdog/Underdog as the culmination of a talent that is equal to the playwright’s ambition. “Parks aims for the sky but succeeds mightily in bringing her subject right into the cross hairs. Kudos all around,” he concludes. Elizabeth Pochoda, writing for The Nation, remains impressed by the “visceral” impact of the play’s flowing language that complements the “swift, inevitable momentum” of the play’s direction. “Parks writes dialogue so vigorous and beautiful and hilarious you’d almost think these men were free,” she observes.
Not all critics, however, were as impressed with the play’s language. Citing dialogue that seems “too diffuse” and an ending that seems “a contrivance” because the audience garners little understanding of the effect family history has had on the brothers’ emotional lives, Charles Isherwood, writing in Variety, regards Topdog/Underdog as a disappointment. He concludes that, although there is a “vaudevillian energy and style to some of the livelier physical set pieces,” Parks “may be a playwright who is less comfortable in the real world than in the fantastical one of her imagination.” Robert Brustein, writing for The New Republic, expounds further upon this static quality, referring to the play as “essentially actionless.” Indeed, if there is a common complaint among critics, it concerns what Elyse Sommer calls “that all too inevitable ending.” While Newsweek critic Marc Peyser concedes that the brothers’ relationship possesses a “deadly dynamic,” one that projects an “epic feel,” a timeless, biblical quality generated in large part by Parks’s “linguistic panache,” he believes that Parks’s fascination with the dramatic potential of street language ultimately does the play and its audience a disservice. “If ‘Topdog’ has a flaw,” Peyser notes, “it may be that Parks flaunts her comic and verbal dexterity at the expense of building to her fatal climax.”
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