CONFIDENCE GAME

Suzan-Lori Parks's tour de force "Topdog/Underdog" returns to Broadway.

- HELEN SHAW

A man walks into a dingy apartment wearing a big, down-filled coat. He's bundled up against the cold, or so we think. But soon he's doing a thief's striptease: there's a whole boosted suit under there, tags and all. When he turns around, we see another suit, still on its hanger, dangling down his back. He keeps unwrapping himself, finding two shirts, two jackets, two pairs of pants, two belts. Then just when we think he couldn't possibly be hiding anything else he pulls out two ties.

"Topdog/Underdog," Suzan-Lori Parks's tour de force, wears its own puffy coat: it's a poetic Passion play in which the metaphorical crucifix is American history, dressed as a realistic two-hander about brotherly one-upmanship. Every image smuggled inside is some kind of double or inversion or mirror. This is true in a larger sense as well: the often superb Broadway revival now at the Golden can't help being a through-the-looking-glass version of the play's original incarnation, the one that premièred at the Public in 2001 and moved to Broadway in 2002. Expectations are high. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Corey Hawkins are stepping into iconic roles, which were made famous and are still deeply stamped by Yasiin Bey (known then as Mos Def) and Jeffrey Wright.