With a bracing musical elegy, the three actors of The Brothers Size enter the Armory’s main stage, each announcing his own entrance and joining in song to build a rhythmic performance, invoking traditions of oral storytelling, old negro spirituals, and the echoed songs of a chain gang. "This road is hard, this road is hard and rough," the trio sing, as the lights rise on a stunning set. Designed as two sharply-angled, sloping walkways and placed amidst a towering pile of junk, a set dressing of items like car doors, a bed frame, a rusted shopping cart, and chain-link fencing create an altar built to the everyday, the unthanked, the used and discarded.
Portland Center Stage’s latest production provides a rare opportunity in Portland to see work by a contemporary Black playwright performed by an entirely Black cast. Written by Tarell Alvin McCraney—best known for co-writing the 2016 Academy Award-winning film Moonlight—The Brothers Size explores the relationship between Ogun (Austin Michael Young), a grounded older brother burdened with responsibility and Oshoosi (Charles Grant), his pleasure-seeking, daydreaming younger sibling recently released from prison. When Oshoosi's ex-prison mate, Elegba (Gerrin Delane Mitchell), starts coming around, a tug-of-war ensues between two types of kinship: familial and found.
Both brothers are plagued by their own nightmares—Oshoosi grapples with the trauma of incarceration, and Ogun struggles with the fear of losing his brother again and trying to wrestle him back to safety. Their dreams are rendered in actual sequences, with neon and black light costume design nodding to the play's Yoruban references, again showcasing a sound design that draws from across the timeline of Black musical tradition. These scenes felt particularly effective at drawing the moment out of place and time and immersing the room in a liminal landscape.
The trio of characters—all named after Orishas, divine spirits from Yoruba religion—are meant to contrast with each other as archetypes. However, that contrast felt too fractious at times, with Young's Ogun embodying palpable, lived-in pain and Grant's Oshoosi occasionally tumbling too deeply into comedic gesturing. The performance dynamics strayed from conversation with one another, making it hard for the audience to follow the struggles of their fraught love.
Brothers Size also contains a stylized device, written into play, where its characters read and act out stage directions simultaneously. Imagine someone taking a deep breath, but before they do, they turn to the audience and say, "deep breath." It takes time to get used to (if you ever do). Now imagine that happening for a 120-minute runtime. What’s novel at first—especially in moments played for comedy—ultimately becomes tired as the play moves forward. Inevitably, the fourth wall-breaking pulls attention to itself instead of the meat of the scene.
This production feels like a collection of compelling fragments; it’s a play with some moving reflections on the ties that bind us and the many ways—both literal and emotional—liberation can be found. But ultimately its characters felt out of step with one another. The Brothers Size shines brightest when it's at its most lyrical and impressionistic. The rest, unfortunately, feels like it’s just narrowly missing a beat.
Portland Center Stage presents The Brothers Size on the US Bank Main Stage at the Armory, 128 NW 11th, through Sun May 18, $25-$93, for tickets and showtimes visit pcs.org, recommended for ages 14+.
