By Monty Arnold
03 Dec 2009

The Brothers Size was McCraney's first play, written before he entered Yale. By the time he graduated, it had sprouted bookends — a backstory called In the Red and Brown Water and a leap forward called Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet, examining before and after the same set of characters in the Louisiana projects over a span of 16 chaotic, upending years. Packaged as a trilogy in two-performance doses, The Brother/Sister Plays is now playing the Public, coming from Princeton's McCarter on its way to Chicago's Steppenwolf.

The plays can be seen in any order, each being self-contained and focusing on different characters. The first play, chronologically, In the Red and Brown Water, concerns Oya, a teenage runner who runs tragically amok over her romantic choices — settling for shiftless stud Shango instead of stuttering mechanic Ogun Size. The latter owns his own auto-part shop by Play Two and contends with brother Oshoosi, fresh out of prison with cellmate lover Elegba. Marcus, in the concluding play, is Elegba's offspring, struggling with secretly being "sweet" (Cajun for gay, dating back to slavery days when black gays were beaten and their wounds treated with sugar that melted into festering molasses in the noonday sun).

McCraney named his characters after specific Yoruban deities, and the first two installments of his trilogy "are based on stories that I learned through oral tradition growing up in Miami. The West African cosmology of Yoruban is everywhere. It's in the food, it's in the rhythm, it's in the artwork — even the religion itself exists intact."

It gives a lift and lilt to the play's language, and frequently the ensemble on stage erupts into songs and dances. Characters come and go announcing their own stage directions ("Enter Elegba," "Oya Exits"), unfettered by sets. It's a new world.

"Tarell is the most exciting young writer for theatre I've encountered in at least a decade, maybe longer," trumpets the Public's artistic director, Oskar Eustis. "His voice is absolutely rooted in his community, but highly poetic, mythic in its implications. He incorporates West African Yoruban mythology into a story about four black Southerners that's totally real — and, in doing that, he does one of the great things that theatre does: He ennobles ordinary lives. He takes people that the dominant culture pays no attention to and treats them like gods — with the same importance to their passions, their loves and their losses. I just find it thrilling. To me, this trilogy is a landmark. It's one of the most important things I've ever done."

Thus, the stage is set for something wonderful. Enter Tarell Alvin McCraney…