The bathroom, shared with other tenants, is in the hall. Lincoln, separated from his wife, is staying with Booth - very briefly, both men say - in his dingy, underfurnished, boardinghouse-style room. He is afraid his costume would be stolen if he left it at work. So Brandon Dirden makes his entrance in a stovepipe hat, a 19th-century coat and a familiar beard. His funny-sad new occupation is posing as Abraham Lincoln (in whiteface) at a shooting arcade and pretending to fall dead each time a paying customer shoots him with a toy weapon. So he made the difficult decision to get an honest, salaried job.

But violence erupted after a game, and Lincoln saw a friend killed. Lincoln, the older brother, used to be a master at this street hustle, in which the tourists can be very good at choosing the right card - until real money is on the line. In “Topdog/Underdog,” three-card monte is the family business. But what we see around us, in our families and communities, rules our responses. If an employee loses a job because his employer is making cutbacks, his first thought would probably not be, oh, well, time for a life of crime. It is highly unlikely that he would see violence as the answer. If, in the world many of us live in, a girlfriend hurts a young man’s pride, the man might post something unflattering on Facebook. In the Two River production, the tragedy is as much about misguided, seemingly limited choices in the Here and Now (the play’s stated setting) as it is about those other evils.

Top dog underdog play