THE MONSTERS & THE DINOSAURS Are Off-Broadway — Review

To note someone’s ability to make their face go from happy to angry may be the most primitive performance critique, but I cannot find another way to describe how effectively Okieriete Onaodowan achieves this one-two-punch in The Monsters. Appropriately, Ngozi Anyanwu’s play, which she directs herself for this Manhattan Theatre Club and Two River Theater premiere, deals in duals and duels, following the reunion of two estranged siblings.

Onaodowan, best known for musicals like Hamlet and The Great Comet, excels in this quieter role, as the older brother who found sobriety and success in mixed martial arts. Permanently (and appropriately) stanced between protectiveness and withdrawal, it’s Aigner Mizzelle who truly gets to shine after her breakout in 2021’s Chicken & Biscuits. Charming and ingratiating, earnest and deliberate, she appears at her champion brother’s studio after a 16-year separation and is soon living and training alongside him. As the two-hander flips between the present and scenes from their past, when they shared a father whose issues with addiction they’d come to share, it’s a gift to see Mizzelle play so intelligently across a range of emotions. 

The slenderness of Anyanwu’s story is deepened by her direction, and enlivened by a sleek production team. (Andrew Boyce’s scenic, Mika Eubanks’ costume, Cha See’s lighting and Mikaal Sulaiman’s sound designs often conspire to make the one-act pulse with the energy of the most galvanizing sneaker commercials.) Surprises might be few, but The Monsters is a fine study of two siblings who refuse to be beaten down and find communion in the fight.

Similarly straightforward, even amid its own time-hopping, is Jacob Perkins’ The Dinosaurs, directed by Les Waters at Playwrights Horizons. Taking place at a group for women alcoholics, it is a lowkey meditation on sobriety and community, verging on slight but weighted by the strength of its performers: Kathleen Chalfant (who received entrance applause at the performance I attended), Elizabeth Marvel, April Matthis, Maria Elena Ramirez, Mallory Portnoy and Keilly McQuail.

The specifics of their stories are almost beside the point, which is not to say Perkins doesn’t provide them each a moving monologue about their rocky paths toward recovery. The point is that they’re together, and that they’re granted the space to air their grievances with politeness and understanding. Time is played for laughs – listen to what each of their last-ever drinks cost and try to wrap your head around a $1.98 whisky sour – and poignancy, as members flow through meetings.

Perkins writes in the program that he was inspired by The Decameron – a plague-era tale of storytelling as a means of survival – and that sense of cross-generational connection is aptly felt. One of the women’s stories, about an eye-popping interaction with her queer son, hints at one Perkins might (and should) tell next.

The Monsters is in performance through March 22, 2026 at New York City Center on West 55th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.

‍The Dinosaurs is in performance through March 1, 2026 at Playwrights Horizons on West 42nd Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.