FULL CIRCLE

"The Brothers Size" at the Shed, and "Honor" at the Performing Garage.

- HELEN SHAW

André Holland and Alani iLongwe star in Tarell Alvin McCraney's play.

At the beginning of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s poetic drama “The Brothers Size,” now at the Shed, one of the play’s three actors pours white sand—or is it salt?—in a circle on the otherwise empty stage. This ceremonial ring becomes an in-the-round playing area, and, as the performers enter and exit it, their feet scuff the particles, sending dust up to drift in the light.

Two of the men are brothers, bickering in their shared Louisiana home: the irrepressible Oshoosi Size (Alani iLongwe), who has only recently returned from prison, and his strict older sibling, Ogun Size (André Holland), who can't stop hassling him. The heat is stultifying, and Oshoosi, still on probation, is “just trying to live easy”—but Ogun wants his brother up early, working in Ogun’s car shop, pulling his weight, avoiding the law. A third man, the alluring Elegba (Malcolm Mays), makes their two-body system even more unstable. Oshoosi dearly needed Elegba’s friendship in prison, but, outside it, he seems a bit too dangerous, a bit too knowing.

McCraney’s characters do occasionally know things beyond themselves; they may not exist merely in the here and now. Ogun, Oshoosi, and Elegba are all the names of Yoruba orishas—Ogun is the deity of iron and war, O-shoosi is associated with the hunt, and the trickster Elegba opens the gates between worlds. As the three men narrate their story, they also dance (Juel D. Lane is the choreographer), leaping over one another or lining up for a synchronized number—part polyrhythmic stepping, part game of tag—accompanied by an onstage drummer (Munir Zakee). Sometimes the characters speak their own stage directions and offer their own metaphors. “Elegba enters, drifting, like the moon,” Mays says of his character’s gleaming and magnetic presence, which exerts a pull on O-shoosi that waxes and wanes.