The best reason to see Topdog/Underdog in its limited engagement at Actors Theater of Louisville is the mind-blowing performances of Stephen Tyrone Williams as Booth and Don Guillory as Lincoln in the Pulitzer Price-winning play by Suzan-Lori Parks. As two African-American brothers whose father gave them those names "as a joke," they live together in a seedy rooming house and constantly lament their unfortunate circumstances that began with parental abandonment. Their promiscuous mother first deserted them. Two years later, their alcoholic father did the same.
Separately they've tried hustling with the three-card monte street scam, with Lincoln more successful than Booth. In the game of life, they've learned they must con or be conned. Their identities seem fluid as they shift poses and clothing (designed by Susan Neason) in their cramped quarters (well conveyed by scenic designer Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams). Lincoln, in a stovepipe hat and beard, has taken a demeaning job posing as the assassinated President in an arcade shooting booth. Booth deludes himself that marriage with a woman named Grace will change his fate.
Director Will MacAdams moves scenes forward with high intensity. Foreshadowed from the start is the Cain and Abel story. When the eruption finally comes, it's devastating.
