Kara Young and Nicholas Braun make an engaging odd couple as emotionally (and physically) damaged young people in a decades-long situationship in Gruesome Playground Injuries, which opened Sunday at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. Rajiv Joseph’s two-hander, which premiered in 2011 at Second Stage, is an actor’s dream — allowing performers to play quirkily damaged individuals from age 8 to age 38. In Neil Pepe’s revival, they also physically transform onstage between scenes, changing into and out of Sarah Lux’s costumes and applying or removing makeup and prosthetics (designed by Brian Strumwasser) that demonstrate the physical scars of their accident-prone characters.
Kayleen and Doug first meet at age 8 in the nurse’s office of their Catholic elementary school, where he sports a bandage around his head after bicycling off the roof in a misguided attempt at “playing Even Knievel.” Kayleen, bouncing on one of the two beds despite the stomach ache that landed her there, girlishly twists the strands of one of her pigtails while coyly asking to see the gash on his forehead and then carefully picking the gravel out of his palms. The two have an immediate rapport, and each manages to convey a partial knowledge of the world that rings true for kids of their age (as wehne she explains to Doug what a dungeon is: “where people can go to languish and get some peace and quiet”). They also signal a skewed psychology that gives us reason to worry how things will turn out as they get older. “I like to get stitches,” daredevil Doug says matter-of-factly. “It makes your skin feel tight.”
That statement turns out to be prophetic. Most of their future encounters seem to take place in a health care facility where one or the other has landed after some kind of accident or traumatic event — a broken leg, a damaged eye socket, a mental breakdown after prolong periods of self-harm. These are two damaged souls who bond over their brokenness but who seem reluctant to expose their vulnerability too openly — until it’s too late.
The actors also are a mismatch physically — 6-foot-7-inch Braun towers over the diminutive Young even when she wears heels — but they lean into the discrepancy in cunning ways. When Braun’s 18-year-old Doug hunches over on the floor of her bedroom with his face in his hands after she confesses that her boyfriend essentially date-raped her, Young’s Kayleen seeks to comfort him, crawling on top of him like a tortoise shell in a full-body embrace as she seeks to quiet his rage. In an earlier scene, when they meet up in a hospital after a firecracker explodes in his face, they share a gentle but slightly awkward dance with Braun curling over Young like a candy cane.
There’s an abstract quality to their conversations that’s heightened by Joseph’s off-kilter dialogue and the clinical James Turrell-like lighting design (by Japhy Weideman) on Arnulfo Maldonado’s spare set. Young, a two-time Tony winner, makes such sharp distinctions in Kayleen’s manner and tone as her character gets older that the projected projected scene titles telling us their ages seem almost irrelevant. There’s less variation in Braun’s performance, but the Succession alum manages to hold his own on stage and deliver an affecting performance.
Still, it can be hard to make sense of the show’s central conceit — that these childhood buddies are only connecting in five-year increments when one or the other is in a moment of crisis — or to glean an overriding message that justifies the time we’re spending in the company of this star-crossed not-quite couple. Gruesome Playground Injuries mostly succeeds as an acting exercise, where the performers can throw themselves (sometimes literally) into showy recklessness. ★★★☆☆
GRUESOME PLAYGROUND INJURIES
Lucille Lortel Theatre, Off Broadway
Running time: 90 minutes (with no intermission)
Tickets on sale through December 28 for $50 to $265
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