Siblings tend to develop shared habits: joint hobbies, inside jokes, matching defenses. Sometimes, even the same vice. At least, that’s the case for Big and Lil, a brother and sister wrestling for redemption in the playwright-director Ngozi Anyanwu’s engrossing two-hander “The Monsters,” which opened Wednesday at City Center Stage II.
We first meet Big (Okieriete Onaodowan) in the space he knows best: the boxing ring. Nearly 40, he is still swift, domineering, hungry for a win; under those bright lights, he goes by “The Monster.” But for Big, the post-fight comedown may be even scarier. After a match, he retreats into himself, struggles to communicate, works hard to project a sense of calm, to check his beast. We learn that it’s here, in the world outside the ring, that Big feels he is fighting for his humanity. He knows his country’s distaste for big, Black monsters.
His composure wavers slightly when Lil (Aigner Mizzelle), his openhearted, wide-smile sister whom he left behind 16 years ago, appears unannounced in his locker room after a winning fight. She is cagey at first and understandably bitter about his absence, but still drenched in desperation to reconnect with her brother — a goal she makes quick work of when Big agrees to train her.
It’s a practical proposition — Lil has enjoyed tussling since she was a kid — but it’s also a nostalgic one. Because, really, Big has always been training Lil to fight. The torrents of abuse they endured from their alcoholic father as children steeled both of their backbones.
Anyanwu’s script clusters action in tight, muscular scenes that move along two timelines at once, bouncing between memories of the siblings’ tumultuous childhood and their present-day reunion, which is also affected by alcohol: Lil is concerningly dependent on it; Big, after years of sobriety, won’t go near the stuff. Watching the cast time travel in front of us is a decadent experience for fans of great acting. Onaodowan and Mizzelle toggle their characters’ ages through shifts in voice, body language, physical mannerisms.
Together, they are hypnotic and deftly squeeze every juicy ounce of meaning from Anyanwu’s metaphor-ripe play, a co-production of Manhattan Theater Club and Two River Theater Theater in Red Bank, N.J. Mizzelle is a master of comedic timing, while the strength of Onaodowan’s performance is his restraint. Their chemistry as siblings is especially palpable during warm-up and training drills: jump-rope variations, sequential push-ups, those dreadful burpees. Anyanwu, alongside the fight director Gerry Rodriguez, wants us to see them sweat. That insistence pays off. By the time Lil has ascended toward professional fighting, we believe she has the chops.
In fact, movement in “The Monsters” reaches a thrilling peak when Lil’s abilities catch up to her big brother’s, and their normal sparring morphs into a full-on shadow boxing pas de deux. With the choreographer Rickey Tripp’s work thrown into the mix, we’re treated to a stylistic form of dance-fight motion that lands somewhere between the ferocity of krumping and the fluidity of capoeira.
Rhythm also moves “The Monsters.” Especially the hard-driving beats (think the vibey bass line in Kanye West’s “Fade”), which usher us through scene transitions. These choices from the composer and sound designer Mikaal Sulaiman lend the production a Black hip-hop-house musicality and give the show a thumping pulse. These are useful textures considering Anywanu’s underlying message about how Black men, especially those who fight, are perceived. Who is deemed monstrous, and why?
“I use to have nightmares about breaking you/Like i was squeezing you too tight,” Big reveals to his little sister. “But holding you kept me … Kept me from believing i was a primate,” he adds with an expletive.
Dialogue like this laces the character’s vulnerability into the fabric of drama. Rather than simply staging acts of prejudice against Big, “The Monsters” reveals what happens when being othered and living in defense are a man’s defining experiences. And also, how that affects the women who love them.
Lil sees the beauty in her big brother’s body. A body that she knows “never got to be little.” “The Monsters” is an insistence on the softness living in even our hardest men; it’s a tenderness the world tries to extinguish that must be wrestled back.
The Monsters Through March 15 at City Center Stage II, Manhattan; nycitycenter.org. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes.
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