None Too Fragile Theater is noted for regularly bringing tense and darkly comic tales to the stage. It’s done it again with Suzan-Lori Parks’ “Topdog/Underdog.” The Pulitzer Prize-winning script is densely and intricately written; it requires a lot of thought once you leave the performance. That’s a good thing with theater and a reason to see this production.

First, though, if you don’t like raw violence on stage (and there are many who don’t, including a playwright or two), then be cautioned about this one. There is a gun, and it gets used in a mean and nasty way.

After seeing the play, someone commented that it was interesting, but seemed to be contrived. After talking for a bit, it really comes out to be that the play is stacked – much like the hustle of the three-card monte game that is featured so heavily in the drama. The world that Parks created for Lincoln (Robert Samuel Grant III) and Booth (Brian Kenneth Armour) has been and is unflinchingly slanted against them.

The brothers were abandoned by their parents when Booth was 11 years old and Lincoln but a few years older. That can produce some heavy abandonment issues, which surface when Booth gets dumped by his current girlfriend. In the meantime, Lincoln is estranged from his wife – and that’s the reason for moving into Booth’s shabby apartment. These men aren’t their best at relationships.

Booth doesn’t work, but gets what he needs from boosting – a slang term for shoplifting. Lincoln (and here’s a mighty symbol for the play) has a job in a local arcade dressed in white face playing Abraham Lincoln on the night he was assassinated [if this job seems contrived, just picture all the people dressed like chickens advertising where to go eat along the main thoroughfares in town]. His job is to re-enact the scene for anyone wanting to take a shot (as John Wilkes Booth) at the president – and apparently there are enough who do that he has a full-time job; that is, until the management figures a robotic creature can do it; so Lincoln fears the loss of his job.

l-r:Robert Samuel Grant II (as Lincoln) and Brian Kenneth Armour (as Booth) in “Topdog/Underdog.” Photo from None Too Fragile Theater

The play seemingly has some racial and discrimination issues at work. And those living under such a scenario have far fewer, and circumscribed, choices in life; in short, prospects for them are more arranged and limited. And that is the case for these men. As lots of people do, when the present is falling apart and the future looks uncertain, they look to the past. For Lincoln, that was working the streets as a pro at the three-card monte sleight of hand. Sucker the player in until it gets down to money, then move in on him. Booth wants to learn the trade too, a step up he thinks from a life of stealing off the shelves (apparently he is good at it, though, because he brings home full sets of clothes for the brothers and fine tableware for a dinner party he unsuccessfully tries to throw for his girlfriend, though she never shows).

The brothers clearly have some sibling rivalry going on in their past. It looms larger in their present, though, as tensions mount in their individual lives. It must be, when you can’t fight and win against the big social forces around you, then you beat up each other. The one-upmanship, or topdog/underdog theme turns toward who can be the best card shark.

It’s at this juncture that the dramatic tensions swirl in on these characters and seemingly drive them in ways they can’t help but go. Violence ensues, first with Booth against his girlfriend (who never appears in the play) and then his brother Lincoln. Think on it; they are named Lincoln and Booth.

It doesn’t seem like much of a dark comedy from this stuff. The laughter portions come in this production as Armour and Grant (as Booth and Lincoln) rag on each other. Grant as Lincoln, who sleeps in a chair in Booth’s apartment, keeps catching him doing something to himself under the covers as he ogles his girlie magazines. Armour as Booth is coyly funny as he tries to get Lincoln out of the apartment so he can have his liaison with his girlfriend without the brother hanging around. That sort of thing.

The lighter moments seem to play better in NTF’s production. The darker moods come across as slowly done. Maybe that’s because of a lot of repetition (although there is a lot in these lives where everything is a repeat of the day before). For whatever reason, portions can seem to drag, especially in Act I when the characters, their issues, and the personalities need time to be established. Things heat up and move more quickly in Act II, nowhere more so than in the final few startling moments.

With intermission, the play runs almost three hours.

Suzan-Lori Parks’ “Topdog/Underdog” runs through November 29th. All remaining performances are at 8 p.m. on the None Too Fragile Theater stage at Pub Bricco, 1835 Merriman Rd., Akron; 330-671-4563; www.nonetoofragile.com. Tickets are $20 (or pay what you can).