Ngozi Anyanwu as Lil in Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s “The Monsters.”
Kevin Berne/Berkeley Repertory Theatre
Great stage acting is a lot like prizefighting. There can be no rest, and every instant demands a unique response. Miss one, and the drama slackens — or your opponent senses your vulnerability and knocks you out.
In “The Monsters,” Lil might start off as an impetuous newbie and functioning alcoholic, but the actor who plays her — Ngozi Anyanwu, who’s also the playwright — is a Muhammad Ali of the stage.
“The Monsters”: Written by Ngozi Anyanwu. Directed by Tamilla Woodard. Through May 3. One hour, 20 minutes. $25-$135, subject to change. Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Peet’s Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley. 510-647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org
From the moment Anyanwu enters Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s production, which opened Thursday, April 2, she exudes the kind of make-it-look-easy elan usually associated with pro athletes.
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As Lil confronts her long-lost brother, Big (Sullivan Jones), for the first time in 16 years, each new idea zings her whole body to cartoonish life. When she tries to convince Big, a professional mixed martial arts fighter fresh off a cagematch victory, that, yes, she’s his sister but, no, she’s not asking for money, her face is a flip-book of expression. With Jones’ Big a guarded straight man, Anyanwu is his perfect comic foil.
Sullivan Jones as Big, left, and Ngozi Anyanwu as Lil in Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s “The Monsters.”
Kevin Berne/Berkeley Repertory Theatre
In Lil, she’s invented a character so adorable she could anchor multiple seasons as a sitcom lead. As Big allows Lil to help him train, she keeps no thought unuttered — which helps blot out those pesky truths about fighting Big is always trying to get through to her. Her motormouth, which makes her an ace hypewoman, is equal parts self-aware and not, endearing and annoying on purpose. She pushes Big just over the edge, then backs off while always landing one final zesty tease: “You might have remembered me from such places as your childhood and s—.”
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Directed by Tamilla Woodard, the two-hander hops from scenes of the pair’s adult reconnection to their shard-like memories as troubled children of violent, alcoholic and absent parents.
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In one of the most moving sequences, affectionate youthful roughhousing switches back and forth with the duo’s hardcore, laser-focused training decades later. That long, continuous arc highlights both the innocent inside every MMA fighter and the play-wrestler in every adult who’s socialized away any urge to fight.
For anyone who grew up with siblings, it might revive the urge to bust out the couch forts and start pretending all over again.
Sullivan Jones as Big holds and Ngozi Anyanwu as Lil in Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s “The Monsters.”
Kevin Berne/Berkeley Repertory Theatre
Still, a story about a younger outsider-turned-rookie and older pro-turned-coach has pretty much only one way it can unfold, and “The Monsters” hews to it. Toward the end, the script overexplains and sentimentalizes.
“I don’t wanna be like him,” Big says of his unseen father, long after the show implied the point. A reconciliation stoops to “Cause we’re family” cheesiness. If Big’s lines about why he fights — everyone sees him, a large Black man, as a monster, so he lets them “see the monster” — are finely wrought, they fail to surprise.
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But characters as lovable as Lil and Big, with Jones’ mournful eyes practically begging someone to melt his gruff exterior, are bound to have a happy ending. That’s the contract a script writes when it begins with such joyous lines as “You incognegro as f—” and sibling squabbles over the car radio.
The fight choreography of Adesola Osakalumi brings its own kind of joy. In some moments, Bailey Trierweiler and UpTownWorks’ sound design triple-underlines the impact of each jab and kick. It comes off a bit like a video game sound effect, but one where you can hear the underlying thrum and throb of the body’s bloodstream as it’s about to get bruised.
Sullivan Jones as Big, left, and Ngozi Anyanwu as Lil in Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s “The Monsters.”
Kevin Berne/Berkeley Repertory Theatre
When Lil is still a tyro, Osakalumi devises the perfect physicality for her struggling to keep up with her brother. Lying on the ground, feebly shadowboxing in the air, she’s like a toddler trying to work itself into a tantrum so it doesn’t have to take a nap. In her first attempt at a fighting stance, she looks more ready to wave a magic wand than throw a punch.
In “The Monsters,” which Anyanwu bills as a sibling love story, Big and Lil are both mirror images and counterweights. They can’t be the same thing at once, so they trade places.
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In a harsher play, that switch would come with violence, but Big takes his losses with subdued resignation that the script could have made a little more out of. For a play about kids who didn’t get a full childhood, that’s a moment he finally grows up — which is to say, shows compassion for his inner child.