The Young Vic's main stage has become a vast paddling pool for a production of Tarell Alvin McCraney's In the Red and Brown Water which I admitted in these pages yesterday to finding theatrically dilute and, frankly, watery. But on the plain, dry stage of the theatre's studio there's a revival of that play's companion-piece which has the punch, intensity and, yes, earthiness that the later work somewhat lacks. Also, Bijan Sheibani's all-black cast is as impressive as any in London.

Ogun Size is the hard-working owner of a garage in small-town Louisiana who spends In the Red and Brown Water forlornly losing his woman to a sexier rival. As played by Daniel Francis here, he's only a little happier, for his brother, Tunji Kasim's Oshoosi, has just been paroled from prison and seems content to spend his days snoozing, eating and begging his brother to facilitate his romantic trysts by giving him a car. Enter the deeply untrustworthy friend he made in prison with a stolen car and a cache of drugs - and Oshoosi is in trouble with the authorities again.

The play's most dramatic happening, which involves a cop notorious for kowtowing to whites and harassing his fellow blacks, occurs offstage. But that doesn't matter. Kasim verbally brings the incident to life before his Oshoosi goes on the run. Nor is there anything static about the play. The resentment, anger and love that mark Ogun's semi-parental feelings for his brother, and Oshoosi's often infantile behaviour to Ogun, keep you tantalised and gripped.

The play could seem pretentious, for it is performed within a chalk circle that's supposed to evoke Nigerian-American myth. Moreover, the three actors recite the stage directions that apply to them: “Ogun Size is sleeping, dreaming”, that sort of thing. But McCraney elevates slangy dialogue into a simple yet rich poetry that allows Kasim to bring out Oshoosi's essential innocence and sweetness and Francis to display a rage that's ultimately directed at himself, for not being a more caring man and better role-model. It's psychologically subtle. It's dramatically powerful. It's well worth seeing.

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