The Young Vic, London SE1
Last year young American Tarell Alvin McCraney made an astounding Young Vic debut with The Brothers Size, his lyrical sibling play set in Louisiana.
McCraney uses Nigerian Yoruba traditions to tell American stories. His latest offering, which is in fact the prequel to the The Brothers Size, depicts Louisiana's post-Hurricane Katrina floodplain by turning the Young Vic's main auditorium into what looks like a circular swimming pool. Yet when, in Walter Meierjohann's beautifully performed and bravely staged production, the cast splash into their performances, the water is revealed to be only ankle-deep.
The focus here is on Oya (Ony Uhiara) an athlete who refuses a scholarship from the state university to stay with her ill mother. It is a decision that keeps her locked into the poverty that traps an entire community, where having a baby is the only alternative to doing nothing. And so Oya is left desolate when neither Ashley Walter's swaggering Shango and Javone Prince's homely Ogun manage to impregnate her.