topdog/underdog at American Theater Company

Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended

"...This is, of course, a superb play, wherein two brothers probe the void between self-ameliorating cultural respectability and being masters of their own con game. Because the legacy of Abraham Lincoln is one of its main preoccupations, it has arrived in Chicago for an apt anniversary and political moment."

Chicago Reader - Somewhat Recommended

"...Capitalizing on the jazzy, syncopated rhythm of the dialogue, director Derrick Sanders turns this American Theater Company-Congo Square Theatre co-production--running in repertory with Sam Shepard's True West, another Cain and Abel story (see separate listing)--into one long, flaying war of words. The flaw is that Daniel Bryant's ill-defined Booth is outmatched by the mesmerizing vocal dexterity of Anthony Irons as Lincoln."

Windy City Times - Recommended

"...If Parks' dialogue comes at you like jazz ( Irons especially has the riffs down to a virtuosic patter ) , Brumlow and Grush deliver escalating explosions. Listen, for instance, to Grush's crescendoing frustration with crickets—by the time he absolutely loses it over the benign but uncontrollable insects, ( about the time of day when “coyotes … kill peoples' cocker spaniels” ) you'd swear his head was about to blow halfway to kingdom come."

Chicago Free Press - Recommended

"...Parks’ vivid vision of poverty and the anger of abandonment leaps over pigment and stunningly connects as an unfortunate universal condition. Lincoln, a former hustler, is crashing in his brother’s rundown transit residence. While Lincoln daily enacts the death of the former president for others’ itchy pleasure, Booth stumblingly tries to enact the card moves that made his brother the talk of the streets. Lincoln, stunned by a former partner’s death, refuses to help his eager brother iron out his clunky skills despite his needy bribery and stinging manipulation."

Time Out Chicago - Recommended

"...Parks’s 2001 Pulitzer winner is more overt in its intentions. Lincoln (Irons) spends his days in whiteface playing President Lincoln at a shooting gallery; given that his no-account shoplifting brother’s name is Booth (Bryant), there’s little doubt how the evening will end, but the beauty of Parks’s language and the sharpness of her observations make for a bracing in-between."

ChicagoCritic - Highly Recommended

"...The bottom line on this show is simple: great play, great direction, great acting. Topdog/underdog is must see on its own and in the context of the repertory offering at ATC even more inviting."