By the time that Big and Lil are lunging at one another with all the brutal skills they’ve developed as mixed martial arts fighters, we already realize they aren’t monsters at all. They are a brother and sister on a rough road toward reconciliation and forgiveness. Okieriete ‘Oak’ Onaodowan and Aigner Mizzelle are every bit as adept in the emotional dance between their characters as they are in the physical interaction enacted on stage with the aid of a choreographer, a fight director, and an “MMA consultant.”
Written and directed by Ngozi Anyanwu, “The Monsters,” a two-hander opening tonight at New York City Center in a production by Manhattan Theater Club, tracks the off-and-on, up-and-down evolution of a relationship that manages to be both unsentimental and sweet.
It begins with a demanding physical workout: Big is competing in a championship fight (against an opponent we are asked to imagine.) He wins the fight (cue cheers via sound designer Mikaal Sulaiman), but even as he takes his championship belt, he doesn’t look all that triumphant, as if it’s just another day’s work to him. (Onaodowan has a deeply expressive face, which I didn’t notice — and probably was not called for — in the roles he originated for which he’s likely still best known, as Hercules Mulligan and James Madison in “Hamilton.”) When Big arrives at the stoop of his building, a bubbly Lil is excited to greet him, congratulate him, critique his performance, make sure the rumors aren’t true that he’s about to retire. Big just looks annoyed.
“Yo, do I know you?”
He doesn’t recognize his sister. It’s been sixteen years since they last met. When he realizes who she is, he isn’t thrilled; he’s suspicious. How did she get his address? What does she want? Money?
“You, like, stalking me or something?”
“Huh? You can’t stalk your brother.”
“Just because we got the same dad, don’t make us brother and sister”
“That’s actually exactly what makes us brother and sister.”
Lil (birth name Josephine) has just moved back into a rough part of town, and gotten a job as a waitress at a local Appleby’s. She took a long bus ride to visit her brother, whose address she found online. By the end of that first scene, Big hasn’t thoroughly warmed to Lil, but there is a thaw; he offers to drive her home so she doesn’t have to take the bus.
The scenes that follow between the half-siblings move both backwards and forward in time, some quietly amusing, some poignant, some confrontational.
There are oblique references to a troubled upbringing and the painstaking efforts to overcome it. Big (birth name Joseph) was interested in art as a teenager; we see him at age 16 drawing a portrait of his sister for her sixth birthday, but they tense up when they hear a car in the driveway. “You know the drill,” he tells her, apparently initiating a routine they have developed to protect each other from their abusive alcoholic father. Big fell into drink and pushed himself out of it; it was his sponsor, he tells Lil, that got him into fighting. “Took me to my first Jui jitsu class. And it was a wrap after that”
“Where’s he at now? Your sponsor?”
“He O.D.’d”
As his career is winding down, Big becomes his sister’s sponsor in a way; he starts training her as an MMA fighter.
“Monster” is a common compliment in the world of MMA (it’s even the brand name of an energy drink that’s one of the main sponsors of a major MMA league.) But Anyanwu seems to be employing the word in a much larger context as well. She even has Lil read aloud a poem that seems to describe people who are forced to make themselves monsters in order to survive.
The poem is an exception in “The Monsters.” Little in the play is spelled out; there are few details. I figured out that it is set in Philadelphia, because of a single reference to the Eagles. We get only snippets of biography; the dialogue is largely spare. But if there is a sense that the playwright is holding back, this feels apt for the characters she has created, especially Big, who has spent his life holding it all in, mastering the discipline necessary to be a champ. These are people who speak most clearly with their bodies.
The Monsters
MTC at New York City Center Stage II through March 15. Update: Extended through March 22
Running time: About 100 minutes, no intermission
Tickets: $95
Written and directed by Ngozi Anyanwu
Choreography by Rickey Tripp, scenic design by Andrew Boyce, costume design by Mika Eubanks, lighting design by Cha See, original music and sound design by Mikaal Sulaiman, fight direction by Gerry Rodriguez, MMA consultant Sijara Eubanks
Cast: Okieriete ‘Oak’ Onaodowan and Aigner Mizzelle
Photographs by T Charles Erickson
