{"id":2276227,"date":"2026-02-10T19:33:39","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T19:33:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2276227"},"modified":"2026-02-10T19:33:39","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T19:33:39","slug":"pulitzer-prize-winning-topdog-underdog-hits-seattles-artswest-entertainment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/pulitzer-prize-winning-topdog-underdog-hits-seattles-artswest-entertainment\/","title":{"rendered":"Pulitzer Prize-winning \u2018Topdog\/Underdog\u2019 hits Seattle\u2019s ArtsWest | Entertainment"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Before pulling back the curtain (or, in this case, the floor-to-ceiling, upside-down American flag) on \u201cTopdog\/Underdog\u201d at ArtsWest, director Valerie Curtis-Newton gives a sly hint at what\u2019s coming for us with the preshow music.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wu-Tang Clan\u2019s 1994 hit \u201cC.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me)\u201d transitions into the 2025 jazz interpretation of the track from local artist Kassa Overall<\/a>. Same song, different sound; same relevant idea, expressed decades apart.<\/p>\n

Cash rules everything around brothers Booth and Lincoln, the stars of Suzan-Lori Parks\u2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning play and the stunning production now running at ArtsWest, produced in collaboration with The Hansberry Project, where Curtis-Newton serves as artistic director.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

On a Thursday night, right before payday, a man named Booth practices his three-card monte patter when a man named Lincoln, in a bushy beard and stovepipe hat, walks into Booth\u2019s room carrying takeout.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lincoln (ML Roberts) lives with his little brother after his ex-wife Cookie threw him out, sleeping on the recliner in the shabby room Booth (Yusef Seevers) rents. (The bathroom is down the hall.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Booth, who gets by as a talented shoplifter, remains convinced his bright future hangs on mastering the three-card hustle and on reuniting with Grace, the ex he\u2019s convinced wants him back.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Booth needs his big brother to teach him that hustle, a con that Lincoln perfected, cashed in on and then left behind for his current honest job: dressing as \u201cHonest Abe\u201d Lincoln in an arcade where guests shoot capguns at him.<\/p>\n

As these two wounded brothers, Roberts and Seevers deliver two of the best performances in recent memory on Seattle stages. These family scars run deep, and Booth and Lincoln can\u2019t help but ruminate on the inheritance, literal and figurative, they got from their parents, both of whom bailed early in their lives.<\/p>\n

Being starved of love and forced into sibling rivalry (even their names, Lincoln and Booth, were given to them as a joke by their dad) bred the miasma of dependence and resentment that poisons the affection they have for one another.<\/p>\n

The simple production requirements \u2014 two actors; a single, claustrophobic set (Pete Rush) \u2014 belie the script\u2019s complexity, and Parks\u2019 deft writing deserves your undivided attention.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cTopdog\u201d premiered off-Broadway in 2001, starring Jeffrey Wright as Lincoln and Don Cheadle as Booth. Wright again played Lincoln after the play transferred to Broadway in 2002, opposite Yasiin Bey (then known as Mos Def) as Booth. In 2002, it scooped up that Pulitzer, and in 2018 The New York Times named it the best play of the previous 25 years<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In entertainment years, 2001 is a lifetime ago, and the chasm between \u201cTopdog\/Underdog\u201d and so much of the media we consume today (not to mention the way we consume it) feels colossal. This isn\u2019t passive consumption; this is art that asks for your brains and hearts for just a couple of hours, promising to entertain and engage if you can just tune in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen people know the real deal it ain\u2019t a hustle,\u201d Lincoln says, explaining why his new job is on the up and up, unlike his former three-card life.<\/p>\n

But who even knows the real deal? Do we? If anything has evolved as much as our media habits in the past 25 years, it may be opinions about America and its foundational value, capitalism, as well as who is getting conned and who is doing the conning.<\/p>\n

Naming any sort of evolution like that can be risky because \u201cpeople are funny about history,\u201d as Lincoln says. \u201cThey like it to unfold the way they folded it up. Neatly like a book. Not raggedy and bloody and screaming.\u201d<\/p>\n

As deftly shaped by Curtis-Newton, \u201cTopdog\u201d gives us laugh-out-loud and heartbreaking moments and, without spoiling any details, an explosive ending that comes as both a shock and an inevitability.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And without that explosion we might not understand what we knew, or should have known, all along: \u201cThe first move is to know that there ain\u2019t no winning,\u201d Lincoln tells Booth. \u201cTa-da! It may look like you got a chance, but the only time you pick right is when the man lets you.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yakimaherald.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before pulling back the curtain (or, in this case, the floor-to-ceiling, upside-down American flag) on \u201cTopdog\/Underdog\u201d at ArtsWest, director Valerie Curtis-Newton gives a sly hint at what\u2019s coming for us with the preshow music.\u00a0\u00a0 Wu-Tang Clan\u2019s 1994 hit \u201cC.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me)\u201d transitions into the 2025 jazz interpretation of the track from local […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2276228,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[21741],"class_list":["post-2276227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Pulitzer-Prize-winning-\u2018TopdogUnderdog-hits-Seattles-ArtsWest-Entertainment.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2276227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2276227"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2276227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2276229,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2276227\/revisions\/2276229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2276228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2276227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2276227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2276227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}