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Regional Reviews: St. Louis The Brothers Size
It's Pinter without the pauses, as family drama smashes through the guardrails in a very fluid, dancey show, with relentlessly great choreography by Kirven Douthit-Boyd of St. Louis Dance Theatre. In 2007, The Brothers Size premiered simultaneously at the Young Vic in London and at the Public Theater (in a co-production with the Foundry Theatre). McCraney won an Academy Award for another work, his screenplay for Moonlight, on a memorable night in 2017. In The Rep production, Christian Kitchens is terrifically exuberant as the reckless youngest brother, Oshoosi. Even before his older siblings clash, he's every spark that flies off their parentless family dynamic. Mr. Kitchens will drive you crazy, if you're older, with his heedless antics. But the scale and scope of all three characters on stage transmutes invisibly into something vastly greater. And that's when you start to feel a bitter sense of pity for him as a pawn for the gods. Halfway through, things change before you're even aware of it. And he's caught up in a struggle between two infinitely more powerful beings. Nic Few is funny and charming, but mostly glows like a burnished, double-stamped gold coin as the eldest brother Ogun, the de-facto parent of the family. He blazes with a particular kind of righteousness. In his perfectly disciplined life, as the owner of a small auto repair shop in the Louisiana Bayou, he's also devoted and occasionally deeply sympathetic, because Southern law is an enemy to them all. Still, chaos crawls in again and again, complicating family relationships. And all the family rules belong to him, which means that middle-brother Elegba (the magical Donald Jones Jr.) must create his own existence outside of a powerful altruism. It reminds me of a couple of plays I saw last season in Chicago, though The Brothers Size can claim all rights of originality in this very short list. In a world premiere last year, in Leroy and Lucy at Steppenwolf, the characters also changed into eternals, though much more overtly. And in At The Wake of a Dead Drag Queen at The Story Theatre (presented at the Raven Theatre), we were told an African folktale of a woman desperately in love, who takes some very bad advice. It's the same folktale referenced here in The Brothers Size. But this play predates At The Wake... by about twelve years, and Leroy and Lucy by seventeen. No disrespect to those other plays, of course. "Randomness is clumpy" as they say (about coincidence) on the science podcast "The Skeptics Guide to the Universe." In this production, the talents of the playwright, director, and choreographer merge together to create a flickering duality that's strange and unexpected. We stare in disbelief as a new reality thrums before us. Thematically, The Brothers Size takes us all the way back to the beginnings of theatre, as gods emerge and intervene on the most personal level in our lives. But if that sounds too ethereal, the show also bangs and clangs with genuine passion and humor. And in a very modern context, in the Studio Theatre at the Rep, we descend into the sub-basement of the mind: where motive and reason also wear fearsome masks. The Brothers Size runs through November 16, 2025, at The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, 130 Edgar Rd., St. Louis MO. For tickets and information, please visit www.repstl.org. Cast: Production Staff: Additional Production Credits: |
