You're unlikely to encounter another cast anytime soon with the consuming fearsomeness on view in Theatre Rhino's production of The Brothers Size. Memories of the Magic Theatre's staging of Tarell Alvin McCraney's play from several years back remain strong, but the trio of actors now embodying the play at the Eureka Theatre makes the experience feel entirely fresh.
The Brothers Size is part of McCraney's The Brother/Sister Plays trilogy that three area theaters coordinated efforts to present in 2010, plays that not only introduced the gay African-American playwright to local audiences but also launched his career on the national stage. There are carryover characters and circumstances in each play, but the plays are standalone affairs that require no knowledge of the companion pieces to communicate their own stories.
The setting for all the plays is southern Louisiana in bayou territory, and in The Brothers Size it is mostly suggested by the swampy heat. The action takes place at or near an auto repair shop sketched out in Margaret Adair MacCormack's scenic design, a seemingly prosaic setting that is anything but, as McCraney's dialogue takes on poetic flights in a rough streetwise vernacular that can singe, confuse, and pleasure the ear. At times, stage directions are spoken, helping establish scenes or offering humor in their obvious descriptions of what we are watching. The play also incorporates expansive soliloquies as the characters express privately what they withhold when together.
The brothers of the title are having an uneasy reunion as the play begins. It's a tense situation made worse with the arrival of the younger brother's buddy from prison with an array of temptations. This undermines the older brother's efforts to bring his wayward sibling into the tightly prescribed straight-and-narrow of his own life.
The time frame is the "distant present," a designation layering a vast history onto the contemporary proceedings. In director Darryl V. Jones' tightly wound production, an opening tableau choreographed by Laura Elaine Ellis features the three actors performing in a piece incorporating both West African dance and contemporary movements, and foreshadows what is to come. Further enhancing the "distant" part of the "distant present," each character is named for traditional Yoruba spirits with corresponding characteristics to the roles.
The cast is a potent force both as an ensemble and at establishing fully differentiated personalities. As Ogun, the older brother burying past sorrows in his work, LaKeidrick S. Wimberly is a steely presence whose deeply rooted attachments to his brother are sorely tested. Gabriel Christian brings infectious but self-destructive energies to younger brother Oshoosi, who dreams of a carefree life on the road. Julian Green is seductively charismatic as Elegba, who offers not only shaky promises to help Oshoosi escape the constrained life that Ogun has offered, but also sexual pleasures that they found together as fellow prisoners.
While the play takes place in a cloistered garage in a cloistered town, the world expands in the characters' imaginations and remembered dreams. Oshoosi was enchanted by a book with photos of Madagascar he read in prison, marveling at the country's "fucking fecundity." And when Elegba produces a car for Oshoosi, to Ogun's displeasure, the younger brother sees it as a magic carpet to escape. But the escape the vehicle offers becomes one of desperation rather than adventure, rivening the brothers in a final act of fraternal love.
The Brothers Size will run at the Eureka Theatre through Oct. 15 Tickets are $15-$40. Call (800) 838-3006 or go to www.therhino.org.