In the Brangelina action-comedy Mr. and Mrs. Smith, there’s an oft Googled scene in which the husband-and-wife assassins-for-hire compare job-related injuries—stitches here, fractures there. It just might have been the inspiration for Rajiv Joseph’s finely wrought play, Gruesome Playground Injuries, is receiving its Midwest premiere via Youngblood Theatre.
But instead of glamour, Joseph gives us grit, complex, wounded characters,and a formidable acting challenge. Doug and Kayleen have known each other since childhood, and Gruesome Playground Injuries is composed of eight scenes from their lives, ages eight through 38, all surrounding some sort of injury. The scenes aren’t chronological, so we bounce around their histories and relationship, and the pieces don’t connect right away. But by the play’s end, we’re left with a beautifully imagined portrait of friends who are not quite able to transcend their scarred lives and bodies to make a human connection.
The scars are both corporeal and emotional. We see Doug the daredevil from the first scene, where he meets Kayleen in the grade-school nurse’s office after “splitting his face open” by riding his bicycle off the school roof. He’s a daredevil and a bit of a clown, and Rob Maass gives him a wonderfully funny signature reaction to any mention of pain or danger—a breathy, consuming “Yeaaahhhh” that suggests an eight-year-old mind fogged in by perverse fascination and pleasure. Maass does a great job of connecting his scenes to a core sensibility, while still finding variations as Doug moves through different stages (and injuries) in life.
Kayleen is in the nurse’s office because of a stomach-ache, and in a touching and silent prelude to the scene, we see her alone in her thoughts, curious and playful. The remaining scenes reveal how thoroughly that youthful joy has been gradually choked off. Tess Cinpinski’s performance is appropriately drawn in, reflecting Kayleen’s growing bitterness and unseen, tortured history.
Youngblood Ensemble member Benjamin James Wilson directs the play with a great sensitivity to the graceful but troubled arc of these character’s lives. He follows Joseph’s suggestion that the costume and makeup changes (a lot of latex cuts and gauze bandages) take place in plain view, and the quiet style of these “interscenes” creates a sense of ritual and ceremony in the space. It makes beautiful sense, for there are multiple ways of mourning in Gruesome Playground Injuries. We cringe and sigh at the pain, to be sure. But we also see that a scar can invite a healing touch, and also become the barrier that keeps troubled souls from connecting.
