By Sandi Masori in La Jolla, California
You can always count on the La Jolla Playhouse to bring you plays that cover a diverse array of topics and culture. The Monsters by UCSD graduate Ngozi Anyanwu, who also plays the character Lil, is no different.
It’s set in modern times and covers the estranged relationship of Lil and her older half-brother Big (Sullivan Jones) over a span of about 20 years.
The set by scenic designer Nina Ball is made to look like a Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) gym. It’s stark, but appropriate.
The play moves around in time as it explores the relationship between Lil and Big over the years. We start out in the presence as Big is fighting a championship MMA match. As Anyanwu and Jones are the only actors, the fight scenes are done by shadow boxing against an imaginary opponent with sound effects for the hits. Jones did a great job making the hits and kicks feel like they really landed.
Right from the first moment Anyanwu draws us in. As we are watching Jones in the ring, we see Anyanwu nervously pacing downstage. Eventually we learn that they are half-siblings, estranged over 15 years. Lil has come to see her big brother’s fight. It takes some time for Big to warm up to Lil. Eventually he does and offers to drive her home.
This begins the reconnection. Eventually they move in together, and after suffering an injury that keeps him from fighting for a while, he decides to train Lil to fight. The play takes us through her ascent in the MMA world.
As she grows in her craft we learn more about their relationship and history through flashback scenes. Half-siblings through their father, they each have a family history of addiction and struggle with it themselves at various points in the show.
When the show goes into a flashback of them as children, the lighting changes slightly and Anyanwu does a good job of acting like a young child to convey that it’s a different time. It’s effective, especially when she’s playing the 6- or 8-year-old version of herself, but did get a little confusing at times. Since there were no costume changes from one timeline to the next, I would have liked a more dramatic lighting change to make it more clear when we were in present time vs. in the flashback. Eventually I would figure it out, but there was a moment of confusion with each shift.
The acting was, as you would expect, superb. One of the things that I was really in awe about was that neither of the actors had a mic on them, the audio was done with boom mics and the actors projecting, something I haven’t seen done in a while. It worked as they both have big voices.
The hour and twenty minutes passes quickly, though there were a few moments in the beginning where I was wondering where it was going. My companion really liked it though and mentioned that she would be interested to come back and see it again to catch the nuances that she may have missed the first time.
In the printed program, Anyanwu mentions that she wrote it as a love letter to family and siblings and that she hopes it will open people’s hearts to forgiveness and reconnection.
The Monsters is at La Jolla Playhouse through June 28.
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Associate Editor Sandi Masori is a theater and food reviewer for San Diego Jewish World