| . | 12/04/2009
The Brother/Sister Plays
By: Victor Gluck
Kianné Muschett, Sterling K. Brown and company in a scene from In the Red and Brown Water
(Photo credit: Joan Marcus)
Tarell Alvin McCraney’s ambitious trilogy, The Brother/Sister Plays, peoples the stage of the Public Theater with the teeming life of a fictional Louisiana Bayou community. Produced in association with McCarter Theatre, Princeton, The Brother/Sister Plays are performed in two parts and each has a different director: Part I is comprised of the two-act In the Red and Brown Water, directed by Tina Landau, and Part II is made up of The Brothers Size and Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet, both directed by Robert O’Hara. Although the plays can be seen in any order, as they follow chronologically, it makes most sense to see Part I first.
McCraney has a unique voice. His language is a form of poetry all his own invention. All of the characters narrate their actions as though retelling an old folktale. Like August Wilson, whom he assisted while he was a student at the Yale School of Drama, his characters are African American but their blackness is a given and their problems are universal. If The Brothers Size sounds familiar, an earlier, longer version was performed at the Public in 2007 in a different production directed by Tea Alagic which focused more on ritual and movement. Since then, McCraney has also been seen in New York at The Vineyard Theatre with the hit show, Wig Out!, also directed by Landau.
Set in the “distant present” in the fictional bayou town of San Pere, Louisiana, The Brother/Sister Plays are ensemble pieces with Public Theater’s excellent cast of nine all playing recurring featured roles, as well as chorus and townspeople. Both directors have brought this colorful community vividly to life by peopling the stage with the teeming world of San Pere. The plays have different themes but the search for self-identity is common to all. The plays work on both a realistic and an allegorical level: most of the characters take their names and traits from the Yoruba deities of West Africa, brought to the Americas by the slave trade. The Public Theater has made a mistake in not including program notes to define this mythic level which goes a long way to explaining the tragic outcomes of most of the plot lines.
Although The Brother/Sister Plays are set in our time in the United States, most of the characters are taken from the Yoruba religion of West Africa and fulfill the traits of their ancestors. Knowing this gives the plays a mythic background that enriches them and is vital to their understanding. The background to the first play is Shango who was the third king of Oyo in Yorubaland and was deified after his death. His three wives, all river goddesses, include Oshun, the goddess of fertility and his favorite because of her excellent cooking; Oba who offered him her ear to eat (which Shango scorned); and Oya, who stole the secrets of his powerful magic. Shango is also keeper of the thunderbolt, like Zeus and Jupiter in Greek and Roman mythology. The Egungun, (a D.J. in the first play,) represents the collective spirit of the ancestors.
The second play includes Ogun, the god of metal work who presides over fire and iron, much like Vulcan/Hephaestus in Greek and Roman mythology. His strength and violence can turn others against him. He is also the wounded warrior, taking on a Christ-like suffering. He is both the custodian of truth and the executioner of justice. Oshosi is the god of adventure and the hunt, a solitary figure in the forest. Elegba (nicknamed Legba) is the trickster god, bringing temptation which controls one’s fate. He is also the mischievous messenger, much like the Greek and Roman god Mercury. He fulfills all of these functions in The Brother Size. The McCraney’s characters with the names Ogun, Shun, Oba and Elegba recur in the third and final play of the trilogy, which brings the cycle to its conclusion.
In the Red and Brown Water resembles Frederico Garcia Lorca’s Yerma in that both deal with a barren woman who is desperate for a child. Oya (played by Kianné Muschett) loses her chance to obtain a track scholarship for a state college when her mother becomes ill. She is pursued by three young men: Elegba (André Holland), who is extremely immature; Shango (Sterling K. Brown) whose sexual allure hits Oya like a thunderbolt; and Ogun Size (Marc Damon Johnson), dull and steady, who stutters until he is able to express his love. When Oya gives up her dream of becoming a track star, she turns instead to being a wife and mother, only to discover that she is barren.
The new version of The Brothers Size is 30 minutes shorter and handles the material realistically, avoiding the ritualistic, dreamlike aspect of the earlier version. Ogun’s younger brother Oshoosi (Brian Tyree Henry who created the role in the earlier Public Theater production) along with his best friend, the bi-sexual Elegba, has just been released from prison. Ogun, the owner of a garage and a whiz at anything mechanical, offers his brother a job in order to keep him out of trouble. However, Oshoosi who is devoted to hedonistic pleasures can’t deal with Ogun’s rules and regulations. When Oshoosi gets in trouble with the law, it is Ogun who decides for him what his fate must be.
Kimberly Hébert Gregory and André Holland in a scene from Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet
(Photo credit: Joan Marcus)
The final play, Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet takes place a generation later on the afternoon of the funeral for Shango who has been killed in the Iraq War. Marcus, (played by Holland), the 16-year-old son of Oba (Heather Alicia Simms) and the late Elegba, never knew his father. After the funeral for Shango, Marcus reveals to Oya’s Aunt Elegua (Kimberly Hébert Gregory) who has the ability of second sight that he has had an erotic and recurring dream: an unknown older man appears to him with a message for someone else that Marcus cannot decipher. In the course of the play, Marcus pursues the question of whether his father was “sweet” (i.e. gay) and his own latent homosexuality. This puts him into conflict with his girlfriend Osha, (Muschett), the daughter of Shun and Shango. Marcus takes place on the eve of a storm that sends some of the characters to Houston, shades of Hurricane Katrina.
The acting is uniformly outstanding, though some of the characters have more dramatic moments than others. Brown is powerful as the compelling, sexually-alluring Shango in the first play and Shua, the visitor from up north, in the third. Muschett is poignant as the developing Oya and later as the troubled Osha. Gregory is lusty, dynamic and amusing as the voluble Aunt Elegua who ages believably from the first to the last play. Johnson’s Ogun Size is the only character who makes a journey through all three plays and he is momentous as he matures from callow youth, to angry adult, to wise older man. Henry captures Oshoosi’s willful wildness and curiosity of things forbidden.
Holland has the difficult job of playing a different main character in each play: Elegba at two stages in his life, and finally, Elegba’s questing son Marcus. He is both successful and involving. Nikiya Mathis and Simms are amusing as choral characters in the first play, while Mathis returns as the hilarious Shaunta Iyun, Marcus’ teenage buddy, in the final play. Henry plays a contrasting part in the last play as Terrell, another immature teenage friend of Marcus with a big ego.
If the plays are different in tone, the first is dramatic, the second tragic, and the third comic. All three plays are performed on the open stage designed by James Schuette with a rear balcony that is occasionally used for special moments. In Landau’s production of In the Red and Brown Water, all of the characters are dressed by Karen Perry in white. For O’Hara’s staging of Marcus, Perry has costumed the cast in brightly colored costumes. Peter Kaczorowski’s lighting adds greatly to the plays’ many moods from realistic scenes to dream sequences, while Lindsay Jones’ sound design and Zane Mark’s vocal arrangements add authentic color to the atmosphere.
The Brother/Sister Plays demonstrate that Tarell Alvin McCraney has a distinctive new American voice. He is not afraid to use mythic and classical forms to give backbone and shape to his stories. The productions by Tina Landau and Robert O’Hara are always engrossing, always engaging. Many of the performances will stay with you long after the stories have ended. The similarity and difficulty of the character names is easily solved by a familiarity with the Yoruba deities which give McCraney’s plays their allegorical underpinnings.
The Brother/Sister Plays (through December 20)
Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, in Manhattan
For tickets, call 212-967-7555 or http://www.publictheater.org
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