A man lay on the floor, tossing and turning in restless slumber. Sweat streamed down his forehead. As he struggled to find peace, a man with a suit and mirrored glasses appeared.     

Walking around the sleeping man, the strange person talked about the man’s stolen freedom and his isolation from the world, especially from his brother. Suddenly he awoke, freed from his dreams about his time served in jail.

Taking a hard look into life in prison, ‘The Brothers Size’ explores the shattering results of being locked away from the rest of the world.

Entrancing performances and gut-wrenching emotion make the play an unapologetic and realistic exploration of the enormous difficulties faced by prisoners and their families once their sentences end. The production, directed by Syracuse Stage’s producing artistic director Timothy Bond, will run at theSyracuse Stage from April 18 to May 12 before moving to stages in South Africa until the end of June.

The story focuses on two brothers, Oshoosi and Ogun Size. Fresh out of prison, Oshoosi is on parole. He lives with Ogun, a car shop mechanic trying to get his brother to find work. But Oshoosi struggles with his past experiences. And Elegbra, his fellow inmate on parole, and their friendship makes his time served hard to forget.

The most important element of the show was undoubtedly the performers’ acting, carried by the play’s three main characters. Each actor delivered a rock-solid performance and deftly portrayed their characters’ complexities and motivations.

Rodrick Covington played Oshoosi, a friendly, good-natured man with a dark side that keeps him from reconnecting to the world. Covington skillfully pivoted between both sides of his divided character, showing the deep scars that prison can leave on even the most likeable person.

His brother Ogun, played by Joshua Elijah Reese, was a stern man who, despite caring for his brother Ogun, just can’t restore their relationship. Reese, with perhaps the night’s best performance, pulled charm from an otherwise unlikeable character and showcased the difficulties family members often face with relatives in prison.

The minor antagonist role of Elegbra, a sly and relaxed man also on parole from prison, was played by Sam Encarnacin. He built much of the play’s powerful tension with a skillful yet subtle performance on the darker side of handling life outside of the big house.

The stage was even subtler. It had only a single wall, a white circle in the center of the stage and a scarce number of props. Much of the setting is determined by the audience’s imagination, which created a deeper feeling of involvement. The lighting helped determine the general setting by precisely switching from inside and outside the stage circle and rarely changing color. The direction did its minor job of setting things up for the characters to tell their story.

The play only lasted for about 90 minutes with no intermission, but the characters’ complex relationships made it memorable. They formed a powerful triangle, revealing how each struggled to belong somewhere, anywhere, and the difficulty of this goal.

All of this fit well with the play’s realistic, uncompromising tone. Climactic moments, such as Elegbra confronting Ogun outside his home at night, have no background music or special setup. They’re just character confrontations driven by emotion and the desire to understand each other, making them extremely similar to universal real-life tragedies. The actors even bluntly called out stage cues when they entered and left the stage, highlighting that the characters had nothing to hide.

Despite its serious themes of prison, race and occasionally sex, the play still had many enjoyable moments. The actors’ enthusiasm often took uncomfortable topics, like finding work during parole, and made them hilarious with pleasant banter. A few Stomp-inspired music bits had the audience clapping to the beat with joy.

‘The Brothers Size’ is a bare, honest and risky play that needed a small yet passionate cast to succeed, and they did so with ease. This play isn’t for theatergoers looking for big production value and pizazz but for those who want a pure show driven by committed performances that don’t pull any punches.  

meantonu@syr.edu

Published on April 23, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Contact Max: meantonu@syr.edu