The Monsters ★★★★

In The Monsters, estranged siblings Lil (Aigner Mizzelle) and Big (Okieriete Onaodowan) meet uncute in a grim, grey gym and carefully navigate back into each other’s lives after sixteen years apart. Big is making a decent living as an MMA fighter, and after seeing her brother win a prize belt online, Lil seeks him out and, upon finding him, cautiously steers a conversation with the older half-brother who quietly but effectively walked out of her life.

LIL: You different.

BIG: How?

LIL: You just… You different.

BIG: I was… I was gone for a minute.

LIL: Long ass minute.

BIG: You were small. Didn’t think you’d miss me much.

LIL: Where were you?

BIG: I was um… I was…

LIL: What? You was what?

BIG: Just… I was away.

Too scarred and suspicious to embrace their reunion, each slowly allows the other back in. As their natural defenses thaw, their relationship returns, different but familiar. Eventually Lil asks Big to teach her how to fight, and he, seeing that she too has a fire in her belly, reluctantly agrees. The two fought together to survive a turbulent upbringing; now that rage can be—must be—put to professional use.

Playwright and director Ngozi Anyanwu incorporates an incredible amount of physicality in her work; not only do her actors get complex roles to play, but they also get intense onstage workouts courtesy of fight director Gerry Rodriguez. Anyanwu also wisely includes much humor to keep the story afloat amid what could be abject misery, and Mizzelle, who gets to deliver most of the zingers, does so skillfully, even if a few lines sound more like the voice of a playwright than a street-smart MMA fighter.

Both performers in this brisk two-hander are thoroughly compelling. Mizzelle has the shinier role; as the play jumps back in time, we get to see a more innocent, sweeter Lil, and the contrast between that and her present-day self is striking. Onaodowan, best known for originating the roles of Hercules Mulligan and James Madison in Hamilton, here gets to demonstrate a far deeper range. Though physically an imposing block of pure muscle, he subtly manages to make his Big feel like the more fragile of the two, a man doomed to be misunderstood once puberty hit, “Hands big as hell. Head big. Too big for everything.”

The Monsters may be centered around the ongoing cycles of generational trauma, but Anyanwu posits that hope is possible for those so affected. Changing course won’t necessarily be easy for Lil and Big, but their lives can be changed for the better, step by step, fight by fight.