The Brothers Size

Synopsis

A lyrical and passionate drama that plants Yoruba myth into the soil of Louisiana. It tells the story of two brothers: Ogun who owns an auto-repair shop, and Oshoosi, who’s just left prison and always manages to take the wrong track. When his ex-cell mate Elegba gives him a clapped-out car, true freedom seems just around the corner... Suitable for 14 and over

Our Review:

14 October 2008

Like In the Red and Brown Water playing in the main house, this welcome revival of Tarell Alvin's McCraney’s first play, The Brothers Size in the Maria – re-mounted by the ATC and Young Vic and touring next month to Scarborough, Berlin and Manchester -- is set in “the distant present.”

The three characters of an all-black backwater in San Pere, Louisiana, by the bayou, are snapped in a pincer movement of experience and critical memory. This is why they speak their own stage directions, forge rhythmic riffs in their arguments and create such a distinctive, poetic and startlingly immediate theatrical effect in their altercations.

The events of Water are partly summarised by Ogun Size, the car mechanic, in explaining to his younger brother Oshoosi what happened to Oyu, his girlfriend: she started seeing the soldier Shango, discovered she was infertile, cut off her own ear.

In the bigger, second play, Oyu is the crux a...

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Latest User Review

David Baxter - 29 October 2008:

Although it is told in a vivid and sometimes impenetrable Louisiana dialect (one group in the front row even followed the play via the text in the programme), The Brothers Size is actually a fairly routine story of brotherly love and loyalty between the older hard-working one and his younger brother, just out of prison and seemingly headed straight back again. What lifts it above the ordinary is a superb ensemble of three young actors (plus a live sound performer) and an unexpected but uplifting rendition of Try a Little Tenederness....

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