There’s sibling rivalry, and then there’s the pitched fraternal battle between Lincoln and Booth, the fatefully named brothers at the center of Suzan-Lori Parks’s devastating card-trick psychodrama. Had the playwright, who won the Pulitzer Prize for this deceptively rich two-hander, named her characters Cain and Abel, she would still have captured the tragic inevitability of the thing. But she wouldn’t have the recurring chord of cruel, fundamentally American absurdity that has made this Black hybrid of “Waiting for Godot” and “True West,” first performed in the summer of 2001, one of the most rightly celebrated plays of this young, bloody, cruel and absurd century. Read our review by Chris Klimek.
Through June 23 at Round House Theatre in Bethesda. About 2½ hours, including an intermission. roundhousetheatre.org.
