"In The Red and Brown Water," Part 1 of "The Brother/Sister Plays" in Boston

IN THE RED AND BROWN WATER
Play by: Tarell Alvin McCraney
Directed by Megan Sandberg-Zakian
Sets, Erik Diaz. Lights, David Roy. Costumes, Sarah Nelson. Sound, Aaron Mack.
Presented by Company One. At: Plaza Theatre, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston. Through Dec. 3.
Tickets $33-$38, 617-933-8600
www.companyone.org


Every so often a play with smashing reviews comes to town, I witness the show and walk away scratching my head. Such was the case with “In The Red and Brown Water,” the Company One production now at Boston Center for the Arts Plaza Theatre.
 
Perhaps the entire fabric of the story is knitted together tighter in “The Brothers Size” and “Marcus; Or The Secret of Sweet,” the two plays that complete Tarell Alvin McCraney’s trilogy “The Brother/Sister Plays,” now playing in repertory at the theater.
 
McCraney draws on the culture of the Yoruban people of West Africa for inspiration. The play’s characters are named after Yoruban gods and goddesses and, like Greek and Roman deities, represent particular powers.
 
The theater program contains an unprecedented 16 pages of interviews, artwork, and back-stories about the playwright, Yoruba culture, and a Family Tree diagramming the characters in “The Brother/Sister Plays”.
 
Do your homework: read this before you see the play. I suppose if this were an Anglo play, we wouldn’t need the back stories and family tree diagrams because the playwright would assume the audience already knew that Zeus was the King of the Gods, Diana the Goddess of the Hunt and so forth. Not so here.
 
“In The Red and Brown Water” characters Oya, Aunt Elegua, Mama Moja and Nia, Shun, Elegba, Egungun, Shango and brothers Oshhoozi and Ogun Size are also the names of West African spirits. The West African deities, like these characters, are the same mix of nobility, fractiousness, connivance, conviviality, and loyalty as any bunch of Greek or Roman gods and goddesses.

Hampton Fluker, Miranda Craigwell, Michelle Dowd - as Marcus, Shaunta, Shun

The setting is San Pere, a small community deep in a steamy Louisiana bayou, where Creole culture mixes with McCraney’s infusion of Yoruban and Vodon (including belief in Voodoo) cultures in which ancient West African beliefs became woven into the Roman Catholicism introduced by white missionaries.
 
Tarell Alvin McCraney’s dialogue and characters refract this stew of history with the intensity of a mirrored disco ball - often with the same disorienting result. Several story lines run on parallel tracks.
 
The acting is fierce. Characters often recite their cues or tell back-story along with their lines…”Ogun enters with a pained look on his face…” Ogun says as he enters a scene. This was a useful storytelling device, perhaps similar to that of an African storyteller dramatizing a tale for his audience and McCraney didnt overdo it.
 
Family life in San Pere is light years away from The Huxtables. Characters swear, lie, gossip, cheat on their vows, and follow their urges. Morality is shifty territory. Fidelity might be taken for strength or foolishness. Forgiveness may or may not be granted but second, third, or fourth chances usually are.
 
Interpreting dreams and premonitions is serious business in San Pere. Early on in the play, Elegba tells Mama Moja his dream about seeing her daughter Oya standing in the water, her blood turning the water brown. Whether it has to do with death, infertility, or something to happen in the next two parts of the trilogy, I have no idea.

I could see the characters’ emotional pains and pleasures but didn’t have enough cultural context to feel them. Themes of fidelity/infidelity, loyalty/betrayal, community/self-interest, obligation/opportunity, didn’t reach the level of universality.
 
For me, one of the best reasons to see this play is to witness a company of black actors work at high levels of dramatic excellence. McCraney’s “In The Red and Brown Water” may have been difficult for me to interpret but the young playwright is an authentic voice unafraid to dig deep into disparate roots of African American culture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cast photo

Back: Miranda Craigwell, Johnnie McQuarley, Hampton Fluker, James Milord. 
Front: Natalia Naman, Juanita Rodrigues, Michelle Dowd, Jerry Goodwin. 
Not pictured: Chris Leon.

Comments

[Ann Baker]

Okay. Well done. I have not seen this piece. And I'm not sure I want to, which means your review was helpful, as I don't like to go to the theatre and come out feeling like I should have studied for the TEST harder. Technical spectacle or cerebral exercises do make me want to go to the theatre.

[Paul Tamburello aka pt at large]

I was determined not to get sucked into the hype - I found a middle path that complimented the acting, questioned the universality of the themes or at least the way the themes were presented, and said clearly that I didn't understand the flow of the play.

This was one of the only plays I've been to in years where reading the program before the show seemed to be a critical key to grasping the underpinnings of the plays constructs - but even reading it after the show didn't help illuminate it evenly.

Please let me know comments of any of your friends who see this play. Your 'take' on my reviews is really valuable to me.