Sometimes the financial mechanics of theater can seem a little too obvious—and so it is increasingly with the presence of celebrities off-Broadway.
A big name, or big names, on smaller stages bring an immediate buzz, then a demand for tickets. The appeal: They’re popular names, and they’re up close on a small stage. The engagement is attractive for the celebrity because they work their theater muscles between TV or film shoots; they’re not on a big Broadway stage for months on end. And who knows: The play could become “the” thing to go see.
Perhaps these exercises are becoming too well-oiled and limiting. In a new production of Rajiv Singh’s Gruesome Playground Injuries at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, Tony-winning star Kara Young (brilliant as ever) and Nicholas Braun (Succession’s Cousin Greg) are doing a two-hander about the fractured lives of their characters Kayleen and Doug, who go from friends to friends to maybe-something else.
The play (booking to Dec. 28), directed by Neil Pepe, does not unfold chronologically, but each era of Kayleen and Doug’s friendship—spanning from the ages of 8 to their mid-30s—has the binding link of a new, gruesome injury that the clumsy, accident-prone Doug sustains.
His body is a warzone of painful bashes and wounds, and the play rings truest in its lovely opening scene, in which the characters are 8 years old, and a pigtailed Young is looking at her then-schoolfriend who has suffered a forehead injury, and oh how she wants to check out the wound, maybe even lick it—with all the ghoulish, terrified, fascinated, no-boundaries wide eyes of a young kid.
In all the eras, two beds provide the only furnishing on stage, and in various settings—usually medical—they are the only items of furniture for Doug and Kayleen to take any rest on, or use as places to talk. Sometimes they are just inert props. Between scenes/ages, the actors go to their respective sides of the stage to get changed, and for Braun to paint make-up on to his face or body to convey the next injury.
While the revelation of each circumstance of those blows becomes ever more absurd, the play quickly loses narrative air. Braun’s Doug is extremely tall and a gentle dope, Young’s Kayleen is much shorter (standing, she reaches his chest), scratchier, ready to argue. Their tonal registers rarely change, or characters deepen.
Braun and Young move the two beds around between each scene, but why is anyone’s guess, because it doesn’t matter where the two beds are—maybe it’s just something to do, a bit of added visual variety. Through the span of the play we see the characters at various times of vulnerability, including Doug lying in a coma, and Kayleen incarcerated in some kind of institution.
That scene particularly reminds us how extraordinary an actor Young is; she furnishes every character she plays with so many layers, tones, whole stories-in-moments. Braun is charming and solid in his character, but less sure of himself on stage than his consummate co-star.
The play repeats on itself, and instead of coalescing in a meaningful way, the era-specific stories are both fragmentary and fragmenting. There’s an element of will-they-won’t-they in romantic terms, but the play’s jagged structure works to undercut the pair’s relationship rather than form a coherent emotional jigsaw.
The production feels not thought-out, and unsure of how to dazzle us beyond the star power on stage. Even with Young and Braun’s talents and efforts to color between its lines, it feels slight. While 90 minutes may sound short, Gruesome Playground Injuries ends up undercooked and overlong.
