For Booth, escape is all tied up in Three-card Monte, the street con that his brother once mastered for money and renown. With the brothers subsisting on Lincoln’s meager salary and Booth’s shoplifting skills, dreams for a better life come hard. (Too fantastical? New York’s Coney Island had a “Shoot the Freak” attraction as late as 2010.) Heritage and destiny – to say nothing of humor and drama – collide in this bizarre display that works as both metaphor and reality. In perhaps the most audacious and risky example of Parks’ pointed, go-for-broke sense of humor, the playwright has Lincoln working as an Abraham Lincoln impersonator – in whiteface – at a local arcade, where customers pay to portray the historical Booth and reenact a certain pivotal moment at Ford’s Theatre. Abdul-Mateen II, Hawkins (Photo by Marc J.
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