Topdog/Underdog
Two Black brothers named Lincoln and Booth share a boarding-house room and hustle three-card monte. Parks won the Pulitzer in 2002, the first Black woman to win it for drama. The play loops American history through a sibling rivalry: identity, con artistry, and the violence coded into the names their father gave them as a joke.
The brothers are literally named Lincoln and Booth, and several readers say that alone spoiled the direction of the story from page one, calling the play, sight unseen, “one of the most over-rated plays I've ever seen or read.” Another reader put it more bluntly: “Why did this win a Pulitzer?” The three-card monte chant that other readers call the play's set piece reads to this group as repetitive on the page, the same routine recurring until, in one reader's words, “it droned on in a few places.” With just two actors, one apartment, and no scenic apparatus doing the work, some find the two-hander thin, admitting flatly that “actually reading it is a bit much.” The written AAVE dialect and phonetic spelling can also slow reading flow for readers whose own speech patterns differ from the rendering, a barrier the script doesn't smooth over the way a live performance does.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
