The George Street Playhouse starts 2025 with the solo piece SMALL, written and performed by Robert Montano and directed by Jessi D. Hill. It is a fast paced biography, tracing Montano’s career from his teen years to today. It is delivered with polished honesty from start to finish, and is joyous and serious and fine.
A teen boy who was always bullied as the runt of his class but had a keen love for dancing, Puerto Rican/Italian Queens native Robert – Bobby — fell in love with horse racing when his mother snuck him into a racetrack for the first time. His attraction to the powerful animals, coupled with the fact that all the jockeys are short men, causes him to switch his passion from dance to racing. He trains at Belmont Park, taken under the wing of other jockeys and racetrack employees. A growth spurt in his late teens removes his height advantage also leading to an increase in weight, both of which make him a less desirable rider. Ignoring his mentors’ advice, Bobby starts taking an Adderall-like amphetamine to lose weight, but the drug use takes a toll on his mind and body, leading to a serious accident during a race. Part of his physical therapy involves dance, particularly ballet, and his old love for dancing is rekindled.
Under Hill’s direction, Montano gives a very physical yet emotionally moving performance laced with voice, posture, and gesture changes as he switches into other characters while portraying himself from a young teen to manhood. His dancing styles smoothly transition from moves picked up on the street to television variety show dancing, from ballet to musicals. Even his recreations of horse races look like the coiled, focused energies of the sport channeled through the body language of dance.
The set, designed by brothers Christopher and Justin Swader with subtle lighting by Jamie Roderick, resembles a corner of a racetrack stable, symbolizing the opening of a new world for Bobby and the close-knit insular world of racing. Brian Ronan’s sound design adds an extra dimension to Montano’s storytelling by bringing to life through sound alone such things as the dangerous wildness of an untamable horse and the heart-pounding excitement of racing, both as spectator and participant.
My only complaint is that the show seems to be packing more information at high speed into its 90 minute run time than it can hold. This is one of those plays that I feel would do better by being longer — splitting itself into two acts. This would allow for more time to focus on Montano’s transition back into dancing while giving the audience a breather from the harrowing tale of the end of his racing career. It also would allow Montano to improve the pacing of the story, especially in transitioning between scenes, while allowing him to pull back a bit and conserve his on-stage energy.
SMALL works best as an engrossing character study of one man’s struggle to make more of himself than his youthful short stature lent itself to. It is a tale of determination, drive, and dreaming that, while polished as a creation, still retains the grit of the streets of Queens and the turf of Belmont Park. It is a show worth seeing, and one I recommend to you for a different evening in the theater. Spend time with this talented man with a big heart, telling his tale of when he was SMALL!
SMALL is presented at the Arthur Laurents Theatre at the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center by the George Street Playhouse through Feb. 2, 2025. For more information, or to purchase tickets, go to georgestreetplayhouse.org or call 732-246-7717.
