In fact, “Topdog” has an epic feel made all the more thrilling by Parks’s linguistic panache. It’s also hilarious. At one point, Booth rips off a store and comes home sporting his haul: two suits, two shirts, two ties, even two pairs of shoes. He then puts on a strip show that’s better than anything in “The Full Monty.” If “Topdog” has a flaw, it may be that Parks flaunts her comic and verbal dexterity at the expense of building to her fatal climax. Fortunately, Wright’s Lincoln is smooth and wiry, and he turns Parks’s prose into lilting poetry. Though Mos Def is best known as a rapper, he’s a marvel as Booth, at turns fiery and wounded, charming and terrifying. Parks couldn’t find two better partners in crime.
