HERE IS MONSTER
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Bullard works magic again in Here Is Monster, with a script that’s significantly richer and stronger. Brock Norman Brock’s dark, nasty play is about a gargantuan brute of a man, Massimo, who beats his wife, abuses his mistress, and murders a stranger’s wife as casually as you might squash a roach. Eventually he’s sent to prison for destroying a man’s cart–a bit of heavy-handed satire here. Confined to a cell so small he cannot stand upright, he decides to change his ways.
Taking a cue from Bertolt Brecht, Brock cleverly takes characters who would be at home in a folktale–Massimo could pass for the giant in “Jack and the Beanstalk”–and forces them to confront modern and sophisticated situations. So Massimo comes face to face with the true complexity of dysfunctional relationships; when he returns home, he finds that neither his wife nor his mistress can deal with him now that he no longer flies into rages or brutalizes them.
But the actors, Daniel Ruben in particular, deserve the most credit for the success of this show. There’s not a miscast actor or a badly directed moment in this production. The tall, stout Ruben not only looks the part of Massimo but also is flexible enough to play all sides of his contradictory personality: his eloquence and his brutality, his love of violence for violence’s sake, and his pathetic need for understanding and forgiveness. In Ruben’s versatile hands, one of the most revolting characters we’ve seen cross a Chicago stage elicits our sympathy while provoking our sense of outrage.
