By EVERETT EVANS Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
Oct. 22, 2009, 5:41Pm
We'd heard so much about Rajiv Joseph as a promising new playwright that a more-than-ordinary pressure accompanied Wednesday's opening of Gruesome Playground Injuries at the Alley Theatre.
Happily, the Alley's world premiere of Joseph's newest play — his first presented in Houston — delivers on that much-touted promise. From its opening scene, and increasingly as it progresses, GPI reveals an original voice with a knack for blending quirky humor and unexpected poignancy.
Happily, too, the subtle but sure direction of Rebecca Teichman and the achingly human performances of Selma Blair and Brad Fleischer (they're the entire cast) do Joseph's script proud in a terrific rendition.
We first meet Kayleen (Blair) and Doug (Fleischer) as 8-year-olds in their Catholic school's infirmary. Kayleen languishes on the bed with a tummy ache. We discover that chronic “sensitive stomach” and vomiting (with traces of blood, or does Kayleen just imagine them?) will be a lifelong concern for the lass.
Doug bursts in displaying the bloody wounds of his latest escapade: He just rode his bicycle off the school's roof! We discover that Doug is perpetually “accident prone” or, more accurately, an accident enabler.
Doug and Kayleen's conditions draw them to each other in a prickly attraction — Doug eagerly expressing his fascination, Kayleen denying hers. But with the scene's convincingly kidlike obsessions (“Does it hurt?” “Can I touch it?”) and, especially, as it closes with Kayleen tenderly plucking bits of gravel from Doug's hand, we realize the two have forged a lifelong connection, whether they admit it or not.
GPI (if that sounds like a medical diagnosis, in this case it's entirely appropriate) chronicles Kayleen and Doug's relationship through the next 30 years, jumping back and forth in time. We find them at 23, or 13 or 33. Usually, one or the other is in a hospital or institution, or has lost an eye in a fireworks mishap (guess who?). As adults, their encounters occur after periods of estrangement. Though their emotional bond remains strong, the two are never willing to admit that at the same time. Joseph gradually reveals Kayleen's deeper emotional disturbances, her more secretive equivalent of Doug's overtly self-destructive tendencies.
Doug comes to believe Kayleen has a healing power for him — or could. Kayleen rejects that notion and its responsibility. And when the situation is reversed, she doesn't want Doug rescuing her, either.
At first you think, oh cute! a comedy about two oddball kids growing up through a string of crazy mishaps. Yet with its unaffected humor and deep sympathy, Gruesome Playground Injuries exerts a peculiar power to involve us in Doug and Kayleen's troubled lives. That's enhanced by wordless interludes in which the actors prepare for each new scene, donning whatever makeup is needed to suggest the injuries. At one point, simply pouring liquid becomes a potent ritual expressing anger and loss. (Trust me, you'll get it.)
Gruesome Playground Injuries finds a fresh way of expressing human vulnerability, and two individuals' struggle to understand their need for each other. Joseph takes risks, as in a key scene in which circumstances force one character to do all the talking, in a big confessional monologue that pays off emotionally. The unaffected humor, catching what many will recognize as normal weirdness, keeps the play fun and unpredictable. An adolescent first kiss scene is nothing new, but the one in GPI boasts the funniest payoff I've seen in any play or film.
Blair is excellent in her role, challenging because moody Kayleen so often shields herself with a surly, hostile and dismissive exterior. But Blair conveys her real pain, too, her sarcastic humor and her confused longing for Doug.
The engaging Fleischer proves a natural stage energizer in the live-wire role of impulsive, mercurial, energetic and ever kidlike Doug. The contrast between these two may be what makes the team playing so effective. They're the two-car emotional pile-up on the highway of life that you just can't look away from.
Taichman capitalizes on that factor with her shrewd staging of their interplay, from horsing-around to sullen spells. She also guides them persuasively through that tricky now-we're-kids, now-we're-adults stuff.
Taichman capitalizes on that factor with her shrewd staging of their interplay, from horsing-around to sullen spells. She also guides them persuasively through that tricky now-we're-kids, now-we're-adults stuff.
Accident and injury are the human condition, Doug and Kayleen seem to tell us. My own mere half-century on this planet leads me believe there's a lot of truth in what they (and the playwright) are so vividly expressing in Gruesome Playground Injuries.
GRUESOME PLAYGROUND INJURIES
• When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays, through Nov. 15
• Where: Neuhaus Stage, Alley Theatre, 615 Texas
• Tickets: $40-$55; 713-220-5700
