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Stage

In his brother's shadow

In Topdog/Underdog, a man idolizes his brother's life. But can an imitation ever attain the glory of the original? Should it even try?

By MARTY CLEAR
Published January 26, 2006

It's a play about two African-American brothers living in a squalid boardinghouse. One's a former con man who left that life when his best friend got killed. The other, younger brother thinks the life of a con man is glamorous and wants to learn the trade.

For director Paul Potenza, a happily married Italian-American who works as a jeweler and lives in suburbia, it's not a natural milieu.

Still, he said, there's plenty of universality in Topdog/Underdog.

"I've never lived in the 'hood, I've never lived in squalor and I'm not black," Potenza said. "But I have an older brother and I know what it's like to share a home with a brother, to share your clothes and sporting equipment, all the fights and disagreements you have as brothers. So that's the way I approached this play."

Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks won the won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for drama for Topdog/Underdog. The Jobsite Theater production opens this evening at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center's Shimberg Playhouse.

The play's characters are Lincoln and his younger brother, Booth, who have been on their own together since they were 18 and 11. Lincoln had been a master three-card monte artist on the New York streets.

"Booth wants to follow in Lincoln's footsteps," Potenza said. "He even goes so far as to give himself a new moniker, Three-Card. But there's one problem. He's not Lincoln. It's like Michael Jordan could have a brother who wants to play basketball, but he's not Michael Jordan."

In the Jobsite production, local stage veteran Ranney plays Lincoln and newcomer Derek Lance Jefferson is Booth.

"Lance scheduled an audition and read what I will say were quality Shakespearean monologues," Potenza said. "He was certainly not a 'hood character. But he earned himself a call-back, and with what little bit of direction I gave him and a little bit of improvisation he made Ranney and me cry. That's not easy to do."

Before this, Potenza's most recent project was as an actor in the 9/11 drama The Guys. That play also has just two characters, and he said that experience helped guide him through the process of preparing Topdog/Underdog.

"That gave me an appreciation of what they're going through," he said. "Doing a two-hander, it's tough. It's tough mentally, and it's tough physically. You really have to depend on the other actor. Lance and Ranney didn't know each other, but you can tell through the course of this that they've become friends. And that's important because this show would never work if you didn't buy that these two are brothers."

Topdog/Underdog opens tonight and runs through Feb. 12 at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center's Shimberg Playhouse. 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 4 p.m. $16.50 and $21.50 plus service charge. (813) 229-7827 or tbpac.org.

[Last modified January 25, 2006, 10:09:06]