NYTG Logo
Topdog/Underdog Tickets
Topdog/Underdog: What to expect - 1
Topdog/Underdog: What to expect - 2
Topdog/Underdog: What to expect - 3
Topdog/Underdog: What to expect - 4
Topdog/Underdog: What to expect - 5
Topdog/Underdog: What to expect - 6
Topdog/Underdog: What to expect - 7
New York, NY

Topdog/Underdog Tickets

Learn more about Broadway Topdog/Underdog tickets on New York Theatre Guide.
Topdog/Underdog: What to expect - 1
Topdog/Underdog: What to expect - 2
View all
Topdog/Underdog: What to expect - 3
Topdog/Underdog Tickets

About Topdog/Underdog

Suzan-Lori Parks's Pulitzer-winning play Topdog/Underdog has its first Broadway revival in fall 2022, starring Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. Get  Topdog/Underdog tickets on New York Theatre Guide now.

What is Topdog/Underdog about?

Topdog/Underdog is a play about two brothers, loosely based on the biblical brothers Cain and Abel. These two, Lincoln and Booth (so named by their father as a joke), had a harsh childhood and are still struggling with an equally harsh adulthood. Booth is out of work and uses his shoplifting skills to provide for himself and Grace, the woman he's trying to woo. He lives with Lincoln, who has a scamming skill of his own: he's a three-card Monte expert. However, he swore off that and now works as an Abraham Lincoln impersonator at an arcade, providing the household's only true income.

Their cohabitation, after Lincoln's wife left him, was supposed to be temporary, but poverty forces the brothers to remain together. Throughout the course of the play, they clash as they discuss their own struggles with racism, romance, and work, until their relationship reaches a breaking point. As Parks herself has said of the play, Topdog/Underdog is about the effect of outside expectations of who a person can become, and "what it means to be family and, in the biggest sense, the family of man, what it means to be connected with somebody else."

When does Topdog/Underdog take place?

Parks only lists the setting as "here" and the time as "now." The vague setting suggests that these brothers' struggle isn't unique to a specific place or time period, but that people still undergo their struggles today.

The premiere of Topdog/Underdog in New York took place off Broadway at The Public Theater in 2001. Marvel Cinematic Universe star Don Cheadle and Angels in America star Jeffrey Wright played the brothers, and George C. Wolfe directed. He also led the next two productions: at the Ambassador Theatre on Broadway in 2002 and at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2003; both these productions featured Wright and rapper Mos Def in Cheadle's place.

Topdog/Underdog was met with critical and awards success; it made Parks the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2002. (She was previously nominated for her play In the Blood, and had written 15 plays, won a MacArthur Genius Grant, and received a Guggenheim fellowship by the time she won for Topdog/Underdog.) The play also won an Outer Critics Circle Award for Playwriting and got Tony and Drama Desk Award nominations. Wright and Wolfe won Obie and Outer Critics Circle Awards for their work. In 2018, The New York Times named Topdog/Underdog the best American play since Tony Kushner's 1993 magnum opus, Angels in America.

The two stars of Topdog/Underdog on Broadway in 2022 have lauded careers on stage and screen. Hawkins is known for his Tony-nominated stage role in Six Degrees of Separation, and for screen roles like Benny in In the Heights, Dr. Dre in Straight Outta Compton, and Heath in The Walking Dead. Abdul-Mateen won an Emmy Award for his role as Cal Abar on Watchmen, and he's also played acclaimed roles like Black Manta in Aquaman and Bobby Seale in The Trial of the Chicago 7.

Get tickets to Topdog/Underdog on Broadway, on sale now.

Start date

September 27th, 2022

End date

January 15th, 2023

Categories

Age

Children under 4 are not permitted in the theatre.

Topdog/Underdog: What to expect - 1
Topdog/Underdog: What to expect - 2
Topdog/Underdog: What to expect - 3
Topdog/Underdog: What to expect - 4
View all
Topdog/Underdog: What to expect - 5

Our Review

'Topdog/Underdog' review — with Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, this play shows its lasting power

5 of 5
21 Oct 2022, 02:00
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...

Topdog/Underdog cast and creative team

By: Suzan-Lori Parks
Director: Kenny Leon
Cast list: Corey Hawkins (as Lincoln), Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (as Booth)
Design: Arnulfo Maldonado
Costume: Dede Ayite
Lighting: Allen Lee Hughes
Sound: Justin Ellington

Venue

252 West 45th Street (between Broadway and 8th Avenue), New York, NY, USA, 10036
Get directionsView map

Accessibility

Accommodations for patrons who are blind, deaf, partially sighted, and/or have hearing loss; partial wheelchair access

More information about Topdog/Underdog

Get tickets to Topdog/Underdog on Broadway, or sign up to receive our latest news and show alerts.

Tickets

Unfortunately, tickets for this event are no longer available.

Get the latest updates on Topdog/Underdog

Sign up to our mailing list to receive exclusive offers, new show ticket alerts and seasonal promotions. You can unsubscribe at any time.

You can unsubscribe at any time. Privacy Policy

Subscribe to our newsletter to unlock exclusive New York theatre updates!

  • Get early access to Broadway's newest shows
  • Access to exclusive deals and promotions
  • Stay in the know about top shows and news on Broadway
  • Get updates on shows that are important to you

You can unsubscribe at any time. Privacy Policy

NYTG Logo

© 2024 NewYorkTheatreGuide.com