Gruesome Playground Injuries

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
The Hudson Theatres
Through June 26

Titles don’t always alert you to what plays are about, but with Rajiv Joseph’s Gruesome Playground Injuries, the appellation is pretty much on the mark.

Divided into eight scenes, this 75 minute one-act revolves around the relationship between two grievously wounded individuals. Kayleen (Sara Rae Foster) and Doug (Jeff Ward) meet in a playground when they are children, then come together intermittently over the next 30 years, each time nursing some injury or ailment, and warily nurturing an odd bond that develops between them based on their masochistic inclinations.

Whereas Kayleen is given to stomach upsets, vomiting, and self-cutting, Doug goes in for more radical self-mutilation: hurling himself and his bike off a roof, fiddling with explosives (causing him to lose an eye), and venturing on a roof once again in the midst of an electrical storm, where he is struck by lightning. He’s also prone to accidents that render him lame and beatings by other boys. By the time Doug is 38, he’s wearing an eye patch and confined to a wheelchair. Kayleen’s still physically in one piece, but she’s done a stint in a mental hospital after trying to excise her stomach with a knife.

Injuries is the sort of sparely written play that calls for memorable performances to thoroughly hold your attention. Once past the freakish premise, there’s little inherent surprise in the non-chronological narrative. Both characters have relationships with unseen others, but these back stories are undeveloped. The mutual attraction between these people (bizarrely expressed at one point when they both vomit into the same container and admire its contents together) is obvious. But whether or not they end up an item, or even survive their self-sabotage, never becomes all that compelling an issue.

Under John Hindman’s direction, Foster and Ward do capable work but never get past the material’s shortcomings.  Foster especially, while striving to be honest in her portrayal, comes across as a little too interior and subdued, and it detracts from the drama.

A. Jeffrey Schoenberg’s costumes, different in each scene, are notably apt, while video designer Dustin Reno’s hazy images of people having fun at skating rinks and so on furnish a pointed contrast to the grim comedy before us. 

The Hudson Theatres, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.; through June 26. (323) 960-7773 or www.plays411.com/playground. Running time: 75 minutes with no intermission.