‘The Brothers Size’: ‘Moonlight’ Writer’s Masterpiece Returns 20 Years Later

Just as the characters dream—and have nightmares—in Tarell Alvin McCraney’s The Brothers Size, so too does this rightly famed play feel like a conjuring in front of an audience’s eyes: a slice of raw reality with many hallmarks of myth. It was first performed in 2005, and a pristinely mounted revival at the Shed (to Sept. 28)—co-directed by McCraney and Bijan Sheibani—is a beautiful way to celebrate its 20th birthday.

The action—more a piece of precise and beguiling physical theatre choreographed by Juel D. Lane—takes place within a circle of scattered salt, the audience seated all around. There are three characters: the brothers Ogun (André Holland, a star of the Oscar-winning 2016 movie Moonlight) and Oshooshi (Alani iLongwe), and Elegba (Malcolm Mays), an inmate at the jail Oshooshi ha