The Monsters – 07 February 2026

The Monsters depicts two (half) siblings who were abused by their father and grow up to be professional wrestlers. Big (Okieriete Onaodowan) is the older brother, whose skills are mostly self taught, while his younger sister, Lil (Aigner Mizzelle) gets the benefit of professional connections. A story of disconnection, misunderstandings, and jealousy, The Monsters speaks to how the worst of humanity can come between two people whose love should have been strong, genuine, and stalwart. At the end of the day, both characters choose to put themselves first to ensure their own survival, and are incapable of sustaining a real connection with each other because their story is already steeped so deeply in mistrust and disloyalty that they cannot build a space that can truly hold both of them.

The story of abused children growing up to see themselves as monsters who cannot love is not a new one. This version of that story is important because the characters  have all of the pieces to build the foundation of a real relationship—shared jokes, in addition to shared traumas. A childhood of looking after each other. A shared profession. Aptly following each other’s careers. Trying to save each other from making mistakes. It doesn’t work—and it’s not because they’re really monsters. It doesn’t work because no number of protective factors will ever tear down the risk they each feel surrounding love and connection. They have a whole world to potentially share, but within the boundaries of this show, they never have a real conversation involving feelings—or even the desire to talk about how much they want to love each other. In this version of the adage, “hurt people hurt people”, Big and Lil speak in fragments, not sentences. They accept each other’s silence, and they let it overpower their own needs to speak. Since they never really speak, they end up stuck with their own view of each other, unable to see true versions of each other, and, possibly, in turn, themselves.

Cha See’s lighting for this show, combined with Mikaal Sulaiman’s brilliant music and sound design elevate the fight scenes (choreography: Rickey Tripp, fight direction: Gerry Rodriquez, MMA consultant: Sjara Eubanks). Notably, the characters don’t fight with each other until the very end. All throughout the play, they are in the ring fighting an invisible force, grappling with themselves. These fight scenes are intense, with a lot of movement and energy felt in the audience. The rest of the show, in contrast, was gray. Bleak. Slow. Each word meant to carry some weight, and also to betray the difficulty the characters felt trying to find their next word. It’s clear to the audience that these are not monsters; they are victims.

The end of the show paints a stark, but candid reality. Not all victims heal. Not all victims get to be authentically close to others—even those who went through the same traumatic experiences. Not all victims get to confront what happened to them. And most importantly, having an outlet doesn’t necessarily fix a broken victim. Sometimes it leads to avoidance, anger, and distance. Sometimes time does not heal all wounds. You see someone, and you’re right back where you started. That’s hard when you started somewhere painful, as these characters did. Being close isn’t right for everyone. Though we rooted for them the whole play, the ending dares us to be comfortable letting Big and Lil lead their separate lives. They are both good people, but they are not good for each other. In some version of this timeless story about the effects of child abuse, parting ways has to be okay. It doesn’t make Big and Lil each other’s monsters. It just makes them their own, separate humans.

I attended this performance on a press pass from The Press Room.