The Brothers Size

Published Wednesday 14 November 2007 at 13:30 by Gerald Berkowitz

Tarell Alvin McCraney places Nigerian myth into a Southern American setting, creating a small domestic drama of great power and emotional intensity in the story of two brothers trapped by the same bond of love that sustains them.

Ogun Size is an auto repairman whose life’s burdens have always included watching over his unsettled brother Oshoosi. Fresh out of prison, Oshoosi is slowly acclimatising himself to freedom, his brother’s encouragement and warnings perversely only making him feel more pressured, while a fellow ex-con seems to offer more of a sense of freedom. But that friend may have darker motivations and may be tempting Oshoosi backwards rather than forwards, and the love of the brothers is put to greater and greater tests.

Writing in simple, short sentences that develop a poetic rhythm and spoken stage directions evoking a sense of traditional storytelling, McCraney invests both the testing of the brothers and the battle for Oshoosi’s soul with mythic power. Director Bijan Sheibani stages it in the round on a bare stage with mimed props, keeping the focus on the intimate personal drama while suggesting universal resonance.

Obi Abili is particularly strong in evoking Oshoosi’s horror of prison, not just for its physical deprivations but for the degradations he permitted himself in his despair there. Nyasha Hatendi convincingly shows how brotherly love can be both the greatest burden and the unique bright light in Ogun’s life. Nathaniel Martello-White successfully traverses a character that the mythic overtones require to be both mundane and demonic.