The title Gruesome Playground Injuries puts you in mind of of the blood-soaked plays of Martin McDonagh, like The Lieutenant of Inishmore or The Pillowman. The sensitive should note that playwright Rajiv Joseph, of the historical fantasias Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, a Pulitzer nominee, and Archduke, which is also running Off Broadway, does provide gruesome playground and other injuries to gawk at. But Joseph’s one-act two-hander, a revival now playing at the Lucille Lortel, is as interested in the untold damage done to the heart and soul.
Told in numbered segments corresponding to the age of the characters, with pauses between each one, the show commences with “Eight: Face Split Open.” We “meet cute,” sort of, Doug (two-time Succession Emmy nominee Nicholas Braun) and Kayleen (two-time Tony winner Kara Young, for Purlie Victorious and Purpose), both of them in hospital-type beds that are the main element of the minimal set design. They’re students in a Catholic elementary school, and no strangers to the infirmary. Kayleen, who is troubled by “bad thoughts,” has tummy troubles; Doug, wearing a bloody bandage on his face, has crashed his bike off the roof while playing Evel Knievel. “Can I touch it?” she says of his wound. He says yes; soon thereafter she gently picks some gravel out of his hands.
Thus begins a pattern that will continue throughout the show, as we jump to “Twenty-three: Eye Blown Out by Firework” and so on for a total of thirty years. The injuries, the circumstances, and the settings (a funeral parlor, a mental institution, and inevitably more hospital rooms) change as Doug and Kayleen mature to 38 and the onset of middle age. Or, sometimes, they appear to regress, as their personal lives, entwined but not quite intimate, distant, get messier. (Yes, we do see this ocular injury, sustained when you think the accident-prone Doug should be past such foolishness.) They’re the kind of lifelong friends who can unself-consciously vomit into the same bucket (also shown, likely the play’s most TMI incident) and bare their scars, notably Kayleen’s self-cuts as she slips into a period of lacerating distress. But through other relationships, other disasters, and long absences they remain bound to one another, if never entirely in sync.
This is a very writerly conceit, and a fairly wispy one despite the attention-getting grue, which falls on the two actors to bring to life under Neil Pepe’s understated direction. His staging reinforces the themes: the lengthy transitions between scenes, accompanied by Japhy Weideman’s lighting cues and David Van Tieghem’s sound design and original songs, find Braun and Young retreating to opposite ends to put on Sarah Laux’s age-appropriate costumes. Touchingly, they sometimes apply Brian Strumwasser’s makeup together, and the tender cooperation speaks volumes about Doug and Kayleen’s embattled bond without their saying a word.
Braun, a Frankenstein’s monster next to his diminutive co-star, captures Doug’s sheepish transition from tree-climbing daredevil to bewildered adult, the kind of guy stuff just seems to happen to, who needs a lifeline to hold onto and doesn’t take it too well when she isn’t always there. As the show opens today, though, he hasn’t quite delineated the change in ages as surely as Young, but with her by his side I’m confident he’ll get there. An elfin powerhouse at age 8 who superbly conveys the long, slow climb to where we find her at the end, Young is one of the wonders of our stage, and Gruesome Playground Injuries is worth seeing for her alone. Who could resist an entire show where she plays a kid? Set one up!–but perhaps without the barf.
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