'The Brothers Size' from Tarell Alvin McCraney feels like a folktale, and its three characters are based on Yoruban deities
Tarell Alvin McCraney's "The Brothers Size" at West Orange's Luna Stage, shows the playwright to be at once a powerful successor to August Wilson and a formidable voice in his own right.
Like Wilson's best work, the play is lyrical and rhythmic, existing for the most part just on the precipice of song, and occasionally spilling over into music, while also looking with a keen and unromantic gaze at challenges plaguing black America.
But McCraney wanders more willingly than his great predecessor into the realm of folk tale, marrying the ancient with the contemporary in order to articulate a long genealogy of suffering. It is a wonderful and complex play that hums with life in the hands of an excellent cast under the direction of Christopher Burris.
Ogun Size (Brandon Carter) is a mechanic who owns a garage and tries to instill a work ethic in his younger brother Oshoosi (Shamsuddin Abdul-Hamid), freshly released from jail. The younger Size would rather sleep in and hangout with Elegba (Clinton Lowe), whom he befriended in prison. Ogun worries about his younger brother and is skeptical of any friend made in jail, but Oshoosi is confident he can turn his life to the positive, mollifying his brother's fears while also maintaining his friendship with Elegba. The play dwells with Oshoosi as he finds himself pulled in opposite directions, struggling to maintain balance.
The peculiar character names are not McCraney's whimsical inventions, but rather allusions to deities of the Yoruba, a West African people who were a major source of the Atlantic slave trade. As a result, remnants of Yoruban practices and cosmology remain scattered throughout the southern United States, where McCraney sets his play. Ogun is a Yoruban deity of iron work; Elegba is a trickster deity of the crossroads; and Oshoosi a hunter, associated with jail.
Brandon Carter, back, Clinton Lowe, front left, and Shamsuddin Abdul-Hamid in 'The Brothers Size," a play whose characters are inspired by Yoruban deities. Together they form a powerful trio of hard work, creative maneuvering that is often tied to malevolence, and persecution. McCraney's Ogun works hard to pull his brother into the realm of honest labor, but Elegba's natural malice threatens constantly to trick this Oshoosi back into a life of torment.
Much of this play's power comes from accentuating its dimension as folk tale. Characters regularly speak directly to the audience, in monologue and even in stage directions, telling us their location or mood. Burris's direction impressively captures this important aspect of the play. At times his task seems more like choreography, as characters move smoothly and purposefully around Luna's evocatively rendered black box (sets by Christopher and Justin Swader, lights by Daisy Long), using props such as rags and stools to suggest shovels and cars.
Like August Wilson does when he sends his characters to the City of Bones or invokes the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog, McCraney invites his audience to another world conjured by the forces of the play. But rather than an interlude in an otherwise realist play, McCraney's voyage occupies the entirety of his drama. "The Brothers Size" is less about these three characters than it is about the generations of African-Americans who have faced similar struggles.
The task facing the actors is therefore daunting, but all three impress. Ogun is sure that he holds the moral high ground, but Carter shows clearly that such a position does not assuage uncertainty and fear. We see similar forces at work on Oshoosi, as Abdul-Hamid fills his character with a showy and defiant confidence shot through at all times with deeply seated anxieties. Lowe captures wonderfully Elegba's slyness, as he saunters and slithers around the stage. The simple act of putting his hat on backwards signals an entirely new dimension of Elegba emerging, one which Lowe allows to emerge fully.
The play's best moments are when Ogun and Oshoosi argue, both putting on their best masks of confidence, while Elegba lingers in a darkened corner, not involved in the argument, but never too far from the strife and the opportunities it might afford him.
"How come you ain't never liked me?" asks Elegba of Ogun. Many will recognize this as McCraney borrowing one of the most famous lines of Wilson, with whom he worked while at Yale. It is a telling and appropriate nod. "The Brothers Size," the middle installment of McCraney's celebrated trilogy "The Brother/Sister Plays," shows this playwright deeply invested in taking the influence of Wilson into exciting new terrain.
The intimate space of Luna Stage seems an excellent venue in which to experience that journey. This is not a production that should be missed.
The Brothers Size
Luna Stage, 555 Valley Road, West Orange, through March 6
Tickets: 973-395-5551
Patrick Maley may be reached at patrickjmaley@gmail.com. Find him on Twitter@PatrickJMaley. Find NJ.com/Entertainment on Facebook.