Mythic and specific, gritty and grand -- City Theatre's "The Brothers Size" is intimate and epic, a robust tale of two Louisiana bayou brothers but also a magical account of elemental drives and desires, lit with comedy and shadowed with terror.

Ogun (o-goon) is the responsible older brother, wresting a living out of his ramshackle car repair shop. Younger brother Oshoosi, aka Osi (o-see), is a wanderer and dreamer, a relative innocent, even though he's just spent a spell in prison, which has left a stain of dark experience to torture his dreams.

The third player in this dance of attraction and repulsion is Elegba, not an actual brother but a self-styled "brother." Elegba is an insidious charmer, playing on some dark bond forged with Oshoosi in prison, worming his way into the brothers' tempestuous relationship.

If you're like me, you'll spend a good part of this 85-minute, intermissionless play getting your bearings, intrigued by the earthy, often profane poetry spun by gifted young playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney but slow to pick up on the story. I wasted time trying to figure out the mythic parallels, where I should have been going with the flow of the actual, physical tale, as the two brothers bicker and reminisce and try to figure out how to respond to Elegba's troubling, seductive intrusion and an unseen corrupt cop.

But no matter how much I let my brain get in the way, the story gradually took over, forcing me back into the trio's present. How could it be otherwise when they are played with vivid humor and veiled passion by the handsome, charismatic Albert Jones (Ogun), Jared McNeill (Oshoosi) and Joshua Elijah Reese (Elegba)?

Jones is the one with impassive majesty, baffled but forgiving until his anger erupts, powerful in seething silence. Mitchell is jittery, mercurial and young, his emotions right on the surface. Not entirely trustworthy, he clearly has a good heart.

Both actors are from out of town. For Pittsburghers, the greater revelation will be Reese, the recent Point Park graduate, who has played on many local stages but never had a chance to show such range. A naturally appealing presence, he usually exudes wholesomeness, but here he curdles with mysterious, corrupting desire.

So what are the mythic parallels? McCraney's script says that the play "draws on elements, icons and stories from the Yoruba cosmology" -- the great Nigerian tribe whose culture came to America with the slave trade. In that mythology, Ogun is the warrior god of iron, Oshoosi is the wanderer and hunter, and Elegba is the messenger, a god of crossroads and a bit of a trickster.

The point of mythic archetypes is that we all embody them to some extent. I don't know whether McCraney's characters re-enact specific Yoruba parables -- several biblical ones certainly come to mind, including Cain and Abel -- but without consciously thinking about it, you feel elemental patterns of loyalty and betrayal, seduction and resistance, confinement and flight.

And the greatest of these is love. That's the powerful burden of the ending, coming upon us with heart-stopping suddenness.

"The Brothers Size" is powered by McCraney's vigorously poetic text, rich in repetition, incantation and song, including a compelling use of Otis Redding's celebratory "Try a Little Tenderness." The characters speak many of the stage directions, further framing the present story as reenactment.

Tony Ferrieri's strikingly dingy set straddles the line between realistic and emblematic, serving easily as garage, rooming house and wayside. A central platform over a pit is both a car above a grease pit and a bed above ... what? Sound, lights, costumes -- all use and enhance the intimacy of the Hamburg Studio space.

Robert O'Hara directs. I wouldn't know how to distinguish his work from that of the actors; it's all seamless, so you can't easily imagine alternatives. The result is tight, self-assured, finely wrought theater, creating an evocative new world that is ultimately familiar.