The Brothers Size introduced British audiences to a distinctive, intriguing new American voice in author Tarell Alvin McCraney when it was staged at the Young Vic last year.

A richly layered, poetic tale of a Nigerian-American convict vacillating between going straight at his brother’s garage, or accepting the insinuating temptations offered by his former cellmate, McCraney’s debut play now returns to its original home in the Young Vic studio.

Simultaneously, his “fast and loose” and theatrically ambitious new work In the Red and BrownWater takes over the theatre’s main auditorium.

While the Brothers Size will again be performed on a stage bare apart from a chalk circle and a heap of red dust, the new play indicates McCraney’s willingness to toy with the conventions of stagecraft.

The theatre’s stage has, intriguingly, been flooded to a depth of 10 inches by designer Miriam Buether. Rehearsals have been taking place in a water tank.

Like The Brothers Size, In the Red and Brown Water fuses Yoruba mythology with the experiences of contemporary black Americans.

It tells the tale of Oya, a young and promising athlete in Louisiana, forced to choose between her sporty ambitions and her sick mother, and later between two men.

Oya is played by rising star Ony Uhiara and the cast also includes Ashley Waters, who has carved out a stellar acting career in the likes of Bullet Boy since quitting the rap collective So Solid Crew, as well as veteran performers Adjoa Andoh and Cecilia Noble.

New Orleans jazz trumpeter and singer Abram Wilson performs his specially commissioned soundscape live, while German director Walter Meierjohann takes the helm.

McCarney is clearly a coming man. His work was championed by none other than Peter Brook while he was still a student on Yale’s playwriting course. He has another new play — Wig Out!, currently playing in New York — coming to the Royal Court in November, and has just been appointed the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new International Writer in Residence.

And he’s not even 30 yet.

In the Red and Brown Water is now showing. The Brothers Size is in the Studio from 8 October. 020 7922 2922 www.youngvic.org.uk