Review by Jim Testa
Like Kurt Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim, Doug and Kaylee are unstuck in time.
They are the protagonists in “Gruesome Playground Injuries,” Rajiv Joseph’s two-character dramedy now running at Jersey City’s Art House Productions through November 10. Their story unspools in vignettes presented out of chronological order, from early childhood to the cusp of middle age, with each chapter of their co-dependent relationship tied to the titular catastrophes that inflict both physical and psychological damage. Ashley Renee Scott and Mario C. Brown play Kayleen and Doug with intensity and passion. This play is all about the acting and it’s riveting, a mixture of churning melodrama interspersed with hearty laughter. Scott is an attractive redhead in the manner of a young Debra Messing, Brown’s a stocky African American with a shock of tangled dreadlocks. Race never enters the discussion, but throughout the play, Kayleen repeatedly challenges Doug’s mental competency, calling him “retarded” and variations thereof, a word I had thought we had moved beyond. It's a reminder that some things hurt even more than broken bones.
Doug graduates from college (Kayleen does not) and becomes an insurance adjuster, ending any conjecture about his IQ. But Brown’s hyperactive portrayal of Doug as a boy does suggest he might be missing a few marbles, as does his reckless, daredevil behavior, leading to a series of escalating injuries that, over the course of his life, leave him a wreck of a man.
Kayleen’s life leaves her a cripple too, but her scars are entirely psychological; raised in a barren, loveless family, she suffers from depression and an inability to make connections. As the play progresses and Doug and Kayleen grow apart and then reconnect over the years, two things become clear; they’re in love, but incapable of sustaining a relationship. This is the story of two damaged people whom life brutalizes and grinds down, both unable to ask for or accept help when they need it. To go back to Vonnegut, they find themselves in a karass, intertwined in a relationship they don’t understand, unwitting servants of God's implacable will.
Director Catriona Rubenis-Stevens has created an immersive experience for the production, with the audience seated in a bleachers-like arrangement against the walls and the actors performing in the center, doing away with the concept of a stage. Music, and projections on textured screens above the audience on each side of the room, provide hints of the era for the following scene, as do the actors’ costumes. The only props are a bed and a few chairs. Everything else is left to the audience’s imagination, as the action shifts from a school dance to different hospital rooms to a funeral parlor. Lighting and sound enhance the ambience. This is a first-rate production that will leave you feeling that you just witnessed a horrific accident, more than living up to its title.
“Gruesome Playground Injuries” runs Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets are $45 for general admission, $35 for seniors and students, available at arthouseproductions.org. Art House Productions, at 345 Marin Blvd., Jersey City, is a nonprofit organization that fosters visual art, theater, and community events, and well worth a visit.
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