» Topdog/Underdog

Topdog/Underdog Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: A play that speaks about the Black experince in White America.
Comment: Ms. Park's play is one of the best plays I have read in a long time. her character's jump out at you and from the first page you are hooked into their lives. It focuses on the relationship between two bothers named Lincoln and Booth. The play has twists and turns and there is always a sense of danger looming. She develps both the characters and story in a very cleaver way, and uses metaphors for what a black man in today's white America may sometimes feel. As a white women I do not know what those feelings are like, but this play taught me what they may be like. read this play. It says something very important that we all should know.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: This play don't get no respect ( it doesn't give it either)
Comment: Here is New York street Americana...
a tragedy of the black shattered family.
Two brothers abandoned by their father and mother
who have shifted and grafted on their own.
Lincoln shot by brother Booth...
Cain killed by Abel.
It reminded me very much of the Steinbeck short novel.
This play is a work not lovable but true.
John Steinbeck of Mice and Men

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Customer Rating:
Summary: 90% awsome, 10% horrible
Comment: ok, the first 90 or so pages of this play are great, i like the dynamics, the writting is good, the relationship between the brothers is well portrayed. Now this is a contemporary shakespearean tragedy, so the ending is pretty obvious, and your supposed to figure out what happens pretty early in the play, if you still dont want to know however stop reading.

THE ENDING SUCKS, it reminds me of the orignal ending of clerks, in which Dante dies in a robbery, Kevin Smith discovered that the only reason he ended it that way was because he didnt know how to end his movie and wasnt tallented enough to write a good ending yet. Now i think parks is tallented, but this could have been better. The manner in which everything unravells is just not believeable. Anyone can end a tragic play with the guy everyone knew was going to die dying. Now it takes much more tallent to not kill him off. When a main character dies in the last couple moments it sends an emotional wave at the audience, death always has that effect, they dont take the time to analyze things because they are overwhelmed with the emotion of the experience. Just because it evicts an emotion everyone comes to the conclussion that it was good, smart. Killing off a character is a great way to end a trajedy if you arent inspired enough to think of anything more tragic than death. I just finished reading 20 minutes ago so im not going to trash it anymore, upon further review i might warm up to it. As for now though, there is one major error in contintuity really that ruined the ending for me, if you catch it youl probably be left scratching your head too, and unless a light bulb goes off and i figure out what just happened, i cant suggest this book.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Gritty Angry Boy Drama
Comment: Parks' play is a well crafted drama about two brothers' lives smoothly built around their relationship with 3-card monte. She does a strong job of handling the darker aspects of sibling rivalry, poverty, and family. I mostly enjoyed Topdog/Underdog for its raw toughness and the way the two-character structure brought out the inner workings and different demons of the two brothers. While not the greatest play ever, it is a good, solid dramatic work and definitely worth reading.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Stinky Dog
Comment: About the only thing I wanted to do after seeing this was demand my money back. This has to be one of the most unimaginative plays I have ever seen. It reminded me of a really bad Saturday night live parody meets Friday part 2 but at the end the writer tried to make it poingnant by adding a death. I don't know why this was even printed. If I was a tree that lost my life to print this play I would come back as a ghost a haunt the publisher till his dying day.

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