A & E

Brotherly love receives a sincerely moving and dynamic investigation in "The Brothers Size" at City Theatre.

The play, which opened Wednesday evening in the intimate Lester Hamburg Studio Theatre, focuses on the fierce clashes and oft-concealed affections of two brothers in a car repair shop somewhere in the Louisiana bayou country.

Ogun Size is the industrious, grease-covered brother who owns and operates the shop.

His younger brother Oshoosi, recently released from prison, is in a shaky period that might well determine whether he stays out of trouble or succumbs to the obvious attractions of fast cars, loose women and available drugs.

Dangling many of those lures and easy answers at Oshoosi is his friend Elegba, also a recently released ex-con, who became his surrogate brother and comfort while they served time.

While the premise sounds simple and straightforward, playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney shows how casual choices have lasting consequences.

He provides us with a compelling and often complex look at the conflict between easy answers and tough love, as well as the fragility and constraints of freedom.

If McCraney's name is unfamiliar to you, it's unlikely to remain under your radar for long.

"The Brothers Size" is his first play, written while he was a graduate student at Yale School of Drama. New York City's Public Theater performed it in October 2007.

He now shuttles between London, where he is the international playwright in residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and New York City, where his most recent play, "Wig Out!," has been running at the off-Broadway Vineyard Theatre. It begins a London run today at the Royal Court Theatre.

"The Brothers Size" -- played in 90 minutes without intermission -- looks at the true nature of brotherhood and the often-wrenching sacrifices it requires.

It's a highly emotional exercise that carries the weight and inevitability of Greek myths.

As Ogun and Oshoosi, Albert Jones and Jared McNeill play their roles with immediacy, dedication and fierceness. Their emotional clashes are always grounded in reality, sincerity and the ability to transition from rancor to fondness with complete sincerity.

Each of these very real people is haunted by demons past and present and grappling with his own vision of what makes sense.

Joshua Elijah Reese plays the easygoing and self-interested Elegba. Although you never doubt that his bond with Oshoosi is genuine, he pursues his own agendas with little regard for their consequences to Oshoosi.

The trio of performers is backed up by a thoroughly slick and professional creative team headed by director Robert O'Hara, who knows when to up the emotional ante and when to show someone's more vulnerable side.

Tony Ferrieri creates a broad realistic playing area of creviced and uneven concrete, rusting metal and cracked and casually repaired panes of glass. Christian DeAngelis supplies evocative lighting, and costumer Angela M. Vesco dresses the actors with simplicity.

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