You momentarily wonder if the tail of some Katrina-like hurricane hasn't hit part of London SE1, destroying the Young Vic's flood defences. For the British premiere of Tarell Alvin McCraney's play, which is set in a black community in Louisiana, the theatre's floor has been filled with water that isn't red and brown, as the title suggests, but black, brackish and several inches deep. This means that the cast paddles, splashes and, in one case, falls flat into the drink while we watch from thin, ad-hoc balconies above.

It seems a lot of trouble for a piece whose stage directions don't call for anything so radical and, frankly, distracting. But I suppose it adds a strangeness, perhaps even a sense of magic, to McCraney's story of the would-be track star who finds herself in two successive conflicts. What's the responsibility of Ony Uhiara's trim, bright, hopeful Oya to the needy, sickly mother so strongly played by Adjoa Andoh? And how should she react to the advances of Ashley Walters's predatory Shango when she's attached to Javone Prince as the more solid but duller Ogun?

Ogun actually appears in The Brothers Size, which is a companion piece to In the Red and Brown Water and is being revived tonight at the Young Vic. In that play, he's a respectable garage owner seething with earnest indignation at his feckless brother, but here he has an almost harder time, since he can't give Oya the baby she comes to crave. It's bound to turn out badly, and it duly does, with the girl lopping off one of her ears in apparent despair and collapsing face-down into the giant pool - but I won't give away the ending.

Is the H2O necessary? What's the point of making the characters recite the stage directions, large and small, that apply to them? And doesn't the action sometimes become slow and unclear? My answers are no, don't know, and yes. Nevertheless, you never doubt the quality of the writing. Walter Meierjohann's production may be a bit, well, watery and lacking in fizz, but the dialogue is imaginative, rich, genuinely poetic. And maybe that's enough.

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