Review: THE MONSTERS at the Dallas Theater Center is a creative MASTERPIECE!

According to the Pew Research Center, approximately 17% of U.S. children under the age of 18 live in blended family situations. Navigating this scenario, which sometimes can take years to fully integrate, requires addressing communication, loyalty challenges, discipline, biological and non-biological parental challenges, and even sibling rivalry among children forced to live and share space with each other. But with patience and time, all parties involved usually rise above the fray to co-exist peaceful through this unique dynamic.

But rarely do we look at the lives of children where parental stability, love, and connection is nonexistent until something negative and maybe tragic occurs. Single parent and high stress households where a lack of resources, parental absence and availability, or the lack of a second parental caregiver can have a profound effect on the lives of children and teens as the continuously mature towards adulthood.

 The risks and pitfalls of parental neglect has on young people caught in this vicious cycle they didn’t create includes trauma, attachment issues, proper cognitive development, academic decline, and role reversal with older siblings taking on the characteristics and responsibility of parenting younger siblings with a loss of their own childhood and teenage years.

When substance abuse issues and mental health challenges enter the picture, including chronic stress, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, post-traumatic stress disorder based on incidents observed or a part of, and emotional numbness in the development of substance abuse challenges in those children, truancy, undiagnosed learning disabilities, school expulsion, an inability to care for self, poverty, and unfortunately incarceration.

It is against this social background that the powerful stage play “The Monsters,” written by Ngozi Anyanwu and running at the Dallas Theater Center in the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre is set.

This drama with comedic touches, expertly directed by Delicia Turner Sonnenberg, takes the audience into the lives of two such fictional characters, “Big,” played to commanding perfection by veteran stage actor Akron Watson, and “Lil,” played by Tiana Kaye Blair in a knockout performance that will leaving you gasping for air on the mat.

Big and Lil are half-brother and sister with Big, an MMA champion filling in whenever he can as the de facto parent even though he’s not good at the job because he is but a child himself, even down to taking on some of the characteristics of both of their blended missing parents. When his little sister shows up after many years unannounced, Big is perplexed but does what he knows he is supposed to do: Be her father but better than their shared father.

Watson, whose stage credits includes The Color Purple, Hamilton, The Preacher’s Wife, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Dreamgirls, dives into the mental dichotomy of Big like a skilled surgeon, both through word and extreme physicality as he mentors his long lost baby sister through training practice and competition while attempting to be the corrective yet loving parent he never really experienced growing up. Watching Big acknowledge and stand up to his internal demons is both cathartic and redemptive until the very end. It is a joy to watch acting delivered at this high caliber of the craft and Watson does not disappoint.

Not to be bested, Blair is also accomplished as a director, actor, and dancer, with stage credits including In The Heights, Twelfth Night, Steel Magnolias, Hair and Dreamgirls. Blair brings a masterful yet youthful, “woman-child” exuberance to the Lil character, affectionately called “Jo” by Big when she’s being obedient or “Josephine” when she’s being disobedient and must be redirected (which is often). Blair effectively transcends her visit to her brother by effortlessly returning to her younger self back to her emerging adult womanhood through effective stage transitions that felt completely natural.

Drama will be drama but this piece finds it heart in these transitions when both characters go back to that time of innocence when even the parental challenges around them was apparently chaotic, with substance abuse present which each model themselves as a coping mechanism, they still managed to be children. The scenes with the rough housing and who was the better and more competitive sibling was simply a joy to watch, especially with Big allowing her to win their play fights (or did he?), and Lil played the annoying yet precocious little sister to the hilt. Their combined synergy shows a love that has no bounds, even if life hasn’t been forgiving for both.

On top of the acting performances, what makes this production exceptional in addition to Sonnenberg’s technical direction is the staging. While the set is small, it was large enough for effective storytelling. The functional space was maximized to the point that the 1.5 hour running time didn’t need to include intermission because the actors had everything at their disposal to tell their unique story. The sound and expert use of the lighting grid creates an experience that places the audience ringside outside of the fence barriers that is an MMA ring.

Jeffery Colangelo, fight choreographer and assistant director deserves major props for his role of creating an MMA environment that had intimacy and audience proximity where the actors were able to create physical authenticity that was simply exhausting to watch at times. It was that good.

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