Gruesome Playground Injuries ★★★★

Gruesome Playground Injuries was last seen Off-Broadway in 2011, but because Rajiv Joseph’s play requires only two actors and tracks their characters’ travails from ages 8 to 38, it has become a favorite for college acting classes. Consequently, anyone who’s studied theatre in the past decade has likely performed or watched scenes from it, even if they’ve never seen a full production. Now that opportunity has arrived at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, where two well-known actors are drawing a broader mix of newcomers and existing fans. The result is an excellent showcase for two wonderful performers in a play that works better in pieces than as a whole.

Perhaps that’s thematically purposeful, as Doug (Nicholas Braun) keeps losing body parts in increasingly absurd accidents. The play opens with him at age 8, entering the school nurse’s office with a bloodied bandage wrapped around his head. He plops onto a bed across from Kayleen (Kara Young), also 8, who is there with a stomachache. She welcomes the distraction and soon learns he smashed his face by riding his bike off the school roof.

Kayleen: If you rode your bike off the roof, then how did you get the bike on the roof?

Doug: I climbed up a tree.

Kayleen: You took your bike with you up the tree?

Doug: Yeah.

Kayleen: Why.

Doug: So I could ride it off the roof.

Kayleen: And then you rode your bike off the roof?

Doug: Yeah.

Kayleen: You’re stupid.

She might not be wrong. In the next scene, which jumps fifteen years, Doug has just lost an eye playing with fireworks. And so the play continues, leaping back and forth in time, reuniting Doug and Kayleen whenever another major accident strikes.

Visually it’s all very arresting, as Braun and Young change bedsheets, outfits and injuries (the fantastic, realistic makeup is by Brian Strumwasser) in full view of the audience. Director Neil Pepe keeps the dialogue brisk and choreographs the many scene transitions with impressive discipline; this playground is well-kept.

The trouble comes in the invisible connective tissue between scenes. Credulity wears thin as to why these two supposedly best friends never see each other outside of catastrophes. Once, okay. Twice, maybe. Beyond that, it’s hard to accept them as anything more than occasional friends who are just a level or two above acquaintances, and the play’s entire structure starts to wobble.

But the individual scenes don’t. Joseph aces those: each works beautifully on its own, and watching these two physically opposite performers navigate the emotional gulfs – height disparity and all – in each scene is a delight. Braun, so adept at balancing goofiness with steely survival skills as Cousin Greg in Succession, gets to double down on those traits here; it’s perfect casting. Young has deeper material to mine, as Kayleen’s most significant wounds are internal. A beloved theater star, she has been Tony-nominated four years running and has won the last two. Her work here is a testament to her blazingly gorgeous talent.

The superb acting acrobatics on display make this playground worth visiting. – ★★★★ 4 stars