Theatre in Review: The Brother/Sister Plays (The Public Theatre)

	Photo: Joan Marcus

With The Brother/Sister Plays, the Public Theatre is providing a deluxe showcase for Tarrell Alvin McCraney, a talented young writer who has generated prodigious amounts of buzz. (Not yet 30, he has a couple of well-reviewed Off Broadway productions to his credit, as well as a residency at Royal Shakespeare Company.) This trilogy, presented in two separate programs, highlights his knack for spinning an engaging, touching narrative filled with lively characters who often speak their minds in uproarious fashion, as well as his sharp eye for the complex, contradictory mores of one African-American community. (All three plays are set in the mythical town of San Pere, Louisiana.) It also casts a light on his writerly mannerisms and a persistent tendency to invest his stories with more meaning than they can easily bear. Nevertheless, it's a great chance to make the acquaintance of a writer who has an exhilarating imagination -- as long as you don't mind the fact that, as of now, his reach exceeds his grasp.

The first piece, In the Red and Brown Water, introduces us to Oya, a young woman who, in her senior year of high school, is a gifted runner with a bright future. When her mother becomes ill, Oya passes on an athletic scholarship, a choice that leaves her stranded and alone in the world. Even as she watches her opportunities slipping away, three men orbit around her: the seductive, faithless Shango; the stolid, respectable Ogun Size, and Elegba, who is obsessed with a dream that contains a bloody vision of Oya and water. (This vision, which could have come right out of several August Wilson plays, is the first hint that McCraney has bigger ideas on his mind.) Like Federico Garcia Lorca's Yerma, a partial source of inspiration for In the Red and Brown Water, Oya is barren, and, as her personal life spins out of control, she eventually expresses her anguish in an act of self-mutilation.

The Brothers Size shifts the focus to Ogun and his brother, Oshoosi. The latter is just out of prison, where he shared a cell, and much more, with Elegba, who wants their sexual relationship to continue on the outside. Ogun senses that something unspeakable is happening between the two men, and, when Elegba commits a desperate act designed to permanently bind Oshoosi to him, the brothers are forced to part forever. The final play, Marcus, or The Secret of Sweet, jumps ahead a generation; the title character is Elegba's son, a quiet, well-behaved 16-year-old who lives with his widowed mother -- he never knew his father -- and endures taunts from his schoolmates who call him "sweet," like his father. Also like his father, Marcus is tormented by dreams, one of which contains a vital message for Ogun Size, still mourning his brother's absence.

Taken together, the three plays form an oddly shaped, but always engaging, story of a community in which, over time, homosexuality emerges into the open, disrupting more than a few lives and shedding light on many uncomfortable truths even as it promises a kind of redemption. (In this universe, both Elegba and Marcus are prophets of a kind.) Keeping things humming at all times is McCraney's talent for tough, funny dialogue that tells you plenty about his characters' hearts and minds. "Why do dark women always got to get mad so quick?" wonders Shango, when Oya proves cool to his advances. Her tart reply: "We can't change color, like the yellow girls when they blush, so we get mad quick, so you can see it in our face." "Some of the nastiest things come wrapped like that," observes Oya's mother, appraising Shango and his sweet talk.

The talk can also be brutally honest, sizing up whole lives in a handful of words. Ogun, fed up with his brother's troublemaking ways, says, "You say I ain't never been in the pen?...All my life, I carry your sins on my back." Or it can conjure up a stylized, wittily woeful poetry all its own. "Ever had so much on your mind that you forgot what you wanted to think about?" wonders Marcus, weighed down by the fear that he might be "sweet." ("They ain't even have gay folks in Africa," he haplessly tells a properly nonplussed adult.) His would-be girlfriend is under no such illusions; "I mean, you the only one I can sing The Wiz straight through with," she points out, outing him once and for all.

The author has bigger ambitions, however, and these afflict all three plays with a bad case of self-consciousness; he is aided and abetted in this by his collaborators. It's one thing to have the actors address the audience throughout; it's another thing to have them constantly speak their stage directions. "Moja looks at Oya like, 'What I say?'" says Oya's mother, following up with "What I say?" It's a gimmick that gets old in record time; the fact that it doesn't cripple the plays is a testament to the cast's superior skills. It's one thing for Tina Landau, the director of In the Red and Brown Water, to have the cast enter joyously singing and greeting the audience; it's another to keep actors on the stage throughout, mimicking the actions of the principals, and forming ceremonial tableaux.

Such notions stick out all the more because they steal time and focus away from the drama at hand. In the Red and Brown Water. is a fast-paced production that, for all its closely observed emotion, never really gets to the heart of Oya's unhappiness; her final gesture feels arbitrary and unearned. Even at less than 90 minutes, Marcus feels padded with too many comic exchanges between smart-mouth adolescents; there are also too many scenes in which Marcus quizzes adults about the past and the contents of his dream, only to be rebuffed. And I if had a nickel for every time someone mentioned the hurricane on the way -- think Katrina -- I could retire right now; someone should hang a sign on the stage: "Warning: Metaphor Ahead." There's almost never a moment when you don't feel that everyone involved is working overtime to convert McCraney's original brand of magical realism into something hard, more akin to myth and legend.

Still, both Landau, and Robert O'Hara, the director of The Brothers Size and Marcus, get the most out of their gifted company. The standouts include Sterling K. Brown, who totally captures Shango's slow-burning sensuality, then returns in Marcus as a visitor from the Bronx on the downlow; Brian Tyree Henry, who makes something intensely physical out of Oshoosi Size's torment; and Andre Holland, as the quietly manipulative Elegba and the heartbreakingly innocent Marcus. Also memorable is Kimberly Hébert Gregory, as Aunt Elegua, the local seer and brutally frank community historian.

James Schuette's simple set, largely defined by a gallery level attached to the upstage wall, provides plenty of room for the characters' comings and goings. All three plays are lit superbly by Peter Kaczorowski, who combines magical effects -- for example, light spreading across the deck like a pool of water -- with starkly theatrical looks that heighten the drama and pace the action. This is one of his finest recent efforts. Lindsay Jones' sound design mixes a variety of naturalistic effects -- thunder, a stalled car -- with an attractive playlist of pop tunes, including "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You," and the O'Jays' classic "Back Stabbers." Karen Perry's costumes lack a strong profile: Everyone is dressed in simple white casual wear in the first play, and in work clothes in the second; the most effective outfits appear in the funeral procession that opens Marcus.

The Brother/Sister Plays are packed with enough honestly crowd-pleasing elements that they might just prove to be a big success for McCraney. To my eyes, they're more of a promissory note on future works; still, there's every reason to expect big things from him.--David Barbour