Review: Art House Productions’ GRUESOME PLAYGROUND INJURIES Bleeds Beauty
In Art House Productions’ current staging of Rajiv Joseph’s Gruesome Playground Injuries running through November 10, the wounds are both literal and metaphorical. Ashley Renée-Scott and Mario C. Brown bring to life the decades-spanning relationship between Kayleen and Doug in a production that transforms physical limitation into theatrical strength.
The play follows Kayleen and Doug’s relationship across 30 years, jumping back and forth through time as they navigate the space between friendship and something more profound. Their connection begins in a school nurse’s office at age eight, where Doug’s latest misadventure (riding his bike off the roof) meets Kayleen’s chronic stomach problems. “Does it hurt?” becomes their refrain, a question that evolves from childhood curiosity to something far more complex as the years progress. Joseph‘s script deliberately scrambles chronology, showing us these two at ages 8, 23, 13, 28, 18, 33, 23 again, and 38. We see them navigate first kisses, sexual assault trauma, suicide attempts, comas, and countless self-inflicted injuries. But the arguably deepest wound at the center of their relationship is society’s insistence that their connection must be either platonic or romantic, with no space for the messy reality in between.
The black box configuration, with audience members mere feet from the action, transforms the 50-seat theater into a pressure cooker of emotion. When Doug shows Kayleen their mingled vomit in a trash can, declaring “look how our throats all mixed together,” the moment is simultaneously revolting and weirdly romantic. The overhead screens, conceived by video installation artists Laia Cabrera and Isabelle Duverger, provide temporal anchors through pop culture references while their abstract imagery (religious iconography, blood cells, kaleidoscopic patterns) creates a dreamlike atmosphere that enhances the play’s non-linear structure.
Click here for Chloe Yang's review for BroadwayWorld