Tarell Alvin McCraney is only a few years out of the Yale School of Drama, but he has scored one of the major New York stage hits of the season with “The Brother/Sister Plays” at the Public Theater.
The size and ambition of the two-evening, three-play piece recall Tony Kushner’s 1990s landmark double-header “Angels in America,” but McCraney’s voice and fluid mix of realism and stage poetry are all his own.
The show which was supposed to close Dec. 13 has been extended a week and I urge you to get into the city to see it during the next three weeks (although I have a hunch we have not seen the last of these plays if “Brother/Sister” does not get a second extension at the Public).
One of the most immediately appealing facets of the production is that it is purely theatrical.
Unlike too many other new plays in Manhattan, McCraney’s work could never be mistaken for a film or TV try-out script — the material would have to be completely reworked to be adapted to another medium.
McCraney (below right) takes us into the lives and aspirations of a large group of people living in and around a housing project in Louisiana in what the writer calls the “distant present.”
The play opens with Oya (Kianne Muschett) making a name for herself as a high school track star. A white college scout offers the girl a college scholarship, but she doesn’t want to leave her seriously ill mother. The scout 
cautions her that the offer might not still be on the table in a year’s time.
Through Oya and her family and friends we enter a vibrant, surprising and funny culture that would be closed to most of us in real life. McCraney keeps the characters and story real but uses an interesting device to connect us to the show — the actors tell us their stage directions before they speak their dialogue.
A device that could be alienating in a lesser writer’s hands draws us in closer to the story and the remarkable cast of actors who are telling it.
The three plays are divided into two different parts. “In the Red and Brown Water” is a whole evening unto itself — “Part 1” — and the other two plays (“The Brothers Size” and “Marcus: or the Secret of Sweet”) are presented as “Part 2.”
McCraney’s talent has already been recognized outside the United States — he is the Royal Shakespeare Company’s international writer in residence.
(For complete schedule and ticketing information on “The Brother/Sister Plays” go to www.publictheater.org)
