- Welcome back to "The Broadway Show"
and let's get back to it.
"Hamilton" and "A Strange Loop"
both won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
And this fall, there are five other Pulitzer-winning plays
coming to the boards.
They are "Between Riverside and Crazy",
"Cost of Living", "Death of a Salesman",
"The Piano Lesson", and 20 years
after winning the Pulitzer and debuting on Broadway,
it's a much anticipated revival of "Topdog/Underdog."
Let's check back in with Paul Wontorek.
- That's right Tamsen,
"Topdog/Underdog" introduces audiences
to acutely named brothers Lincoln and Booth.
I sat down with stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II
and Corey Hawkins to find out more.
(calm piano music)
Welcome gentlemen, so good to see you both.
You know, I have to say, I kind of feel
like my pandemic streaming is coming to life here
because you two both have been really busy.
Corey, we've seen you in "In the Heights,"
"BlacKkKlansman", "The Tragedy of Macbeth".
And Yahya, "Candyman", "The Matrix", "Watchmen".
Welcome to Broadway!
(calm piano music)
I'm so thrilled you're together
on Broadway in this amazing play.
And this play, it's back.
This is the first revival of this play.
And I feel like the minute I heard it,
I thought, yes, that's a play I need to see again.
Did either of you know this play going in, or?
- A hundred percent.
- Yeah, I mean, I think we both were very familiar with it.
There's just certain plays
that speak to you, speak your language,
that you just immediately, organically get.
And that's so rare I think for a lot of communities.
And so especially the Black community,
it's just great to sort of honor that
and honor Susan-Lori Parks' words, you know, it's special.
- It's the first piece of material that I read
where the characters spoke like me,
you know, where I related to them.
I was saying earlier, I used to love Shakespeare
because I found freedom in hiding behind the language.
So the language felt like mask work,
so I could be as expressive as I wanted to be.
Contemporary plays used to give me some issues.
And then I found this play, and I said, oh my god,
they talk like I talk, I know these people.
And I found so much freedom in that.
So, you know, to be able to 15 years later
to be doing this on Broadway, it's literally a dream.
- Corey, you're playing Lincoln.
- I am.
- Yahya, you're playing Booth.
You're brothers in the show.
There's so much great movies and TV and plays
about amazing dynamics between brothers
and these two, it's pretty incredible.
- It's revealed very early on,
our father named us Lincoln and Booth.
It was his idea of a joke, you know,
and that just really sets up everything else
that goes on in their lives.
I mean, the humor, the turmoil
between the two of them and then they grow up
and they're trying to survive
and they're trying to find love.
- It's raw, man, 'cause we all
have those familial relationships, right?
We all know whether it's a sister, a cousin, a father,
a mother, a brother, whatever that aunt, uncles,
there's something about those struggles
because you know each other so well
and you love each other so much
that you laugh through the pain but you also, you know,
so it just continues to evolve, man.
It's something, it's the reason
why these stories continue to be.
- [Paul] Also the game of three-card monte
is a big part of this.
Because Lincoln is retired and Booth is learning.
Maybe not as good as Lincoln is at it, right?
- Don't tell him that though.
- I like to brag, I'm old enough that I actually got taken
by a three-card monte guy in Times Square.
- Really?
- When I came to New York as a teenager.
So like I know all about this game.
- Wow.
- And you actually sort of play it on stage.
That's part of the rehearsal, right?
- It is, it is, and we have to learn it
and understand the game and that's a whole world
in and of itself, that is when we talk about secrets
and the secrets that we keep from each other
and how much, you know, Lincoln shares about that game
with his brother and what he knows that secret can do.
If he really learned what that game is about,
if the audience really knew what this slight of hand is,
that is the play "Topdog/Underdog."
It's a slight of hand, it really is.
And you don't literally until the last seconds of this play,
you're kind of guessing, you're literally doing that.
Just like when you're watching three-card monte,
you're literally going like this.
Like, am I seeing what I think I see, am I?
You're doubting yourself, and so it's recalibrating, man,
it's such an interesting experience.
- It's a very funny play.
It's a very dramatic play.
It seems like it's gonna be quite a rollercoaster
to ride every night.
- It should be, yeah.
- You ready for that?
- Is the audience ready for it?
- Right, right, is the audience ready for it?
(Paul laughs)
- We gotta come either way.
You know, it runs the gamut man.
Like you start one place,
but you end in a completely different-
Sort of the span of human emotion, man.
And I know that it's gonna be different every night.
I know that it's gonna deepen every night.
I know, you know, I trust that, I feel that.
We could come in the room and just do, you know, what we do,
and it could be good, or do as Kenny and SLP challenges us
and go deeper and find the messy parts
and the raw parts and live in that and make it great.
And that's our challenge.
That's our challenge to ourselves,
challenge to the audiences
that are gonna come see "Topdog/Underdog"
And it's gonna be a ride, I think.
(calm piano music)