Review: Gruesome Playground Injuries Seeks Grace in Life’s Fractures

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Philip Hamer Photography

Jessika D. Williams and Brian Slaten as Kayleen and Doug in Gruesome Playground Injuries.

We all have certain memories, often built around life-altering events, that stick with us more vividly, more viscerally, than others. Such a feeling may envelop you during the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis production of Rajiv Joseph’s haunting Gruesome Playground Injuries. Excellent casting and direction by Becks Redman imbues a languid reverence to the bittersweet story of love and pain and memories not spoken aloud. 

We first meet Kayleen and Doug when they are eight; both are resting in the school nurse’s office. She has a stomach ache, and his face is banged up, with a deep scar across his forehead. The two strike up a humorously competitive conversation about their ailments and the roof of the school. Scene after scene, we see Kayleen and Doug become closer, often drifting apart again after. Each moment reveals more than the dialogue conveys, letting the audience fill in the details of how Kayleen and Doug each sustained and survived their multitude of injuries. 

Jessika D. Williams and Brian Slaten are compelling, sympathetic and beautifully flawed as Kayleen and Doug. There’s an immediacy and intimacy required between the characters and between the performers and the audience. The transformation of each performer into their character at a different age occurs onstage with a sense of ritualistic intention. The repetition and intimate space invites the audience into the parts of the story between each reunion, leaving the performers with no place to hide. Fully connected, in-the-moment acting from Williams and Slaten keep the audience engrossed in every detail and moment of tension. The story is foggy with a sense of despair and aching. The performances elicit an even deeper longing for hope.

Joseph’s almost poetically tragic script does not follow a linear chronology, though the memories are tracked and coalesce into the present by the story’s conclusion. Smart direction by Redman ensures our focus is directed to the moments that will connect the dots for us later, carrying the story forward no matter where it lands chronologically. Transparent, fully motivated characterizations add dramatic tension while drawing your eye to a single movement or reaction as if a camera had just zoomed in for a close up. 

An evocative, red drenched set design by Diggle effectively incorporates mirrored surfaces with carpeted ones, creating contrasting texture that visually increases the emotional tension. The flexible costume design by Carolyn Mazuca enables fluid, unobtrusive changes, and Anshuman Bhatia’s lighting design and Kareem Deanes’ sound design add the final touches that create a mood, atmosphere and emotional tone to complement the almost hypnotically compelling, awkwardly convincing love story.

Gruesome Playground Injuries is not for all audiences. The dialogue and action veers into uncomfortable territory in ways that may be upsetting to more sensitive audience members. The poignant drama is for adult audiences and suggestions of dysfunctional and potentially violent family and social dynamics are present, if not openly addressed. The storytelling and performances are captivating and surprisingly cathartic. If you can let yourself be carried away, you may be rewarded with a sliver of hope that veers into the sublime.