Monsters is worth the journey for Steven Strafford’s surprising family drama at 16th Street Theater
“It’s a delight to see the four adept actors in 16th Street’s staging bouncing off one another—not least because not every theater in town would cast these four actors of varying ethnic backgrounds as a biological nuclear family in a contemporary drama, without going out of its way to explain it all. That’s a credit to 16th Street, Strafford, and director Kristina Valada-Viars—who’s also an actor herself, and perhaps thus has an imagination more open to letting good actors act. And that’s what you get here. Even when the circumstances of the plot reach their most jolting, fine-tuned work by the likes of the stalwart Slater and the vibrant Cruz (a performer so full of joy Marie Kondo would tell you to order him by the dozen) keeps you leaning forward in your seat.
As a study of humor as defense mechanism and of the fractured and sometimes fractious nature of memory, Strafford’s Monsters is worth the trek to the suburbs.”
Read Kris Vire’s entire review here