Review: Art House Productions’ GRUESOME PLAYGROUND INJURIES Bleeds Beauty

In Art House Productions’ current staging of Rajiv Joseph’s Gruesome Playground Injuries running through November 10, the wounds are both literal and metaphorical. Ashley Renée-Scott and Mario C. Brown bring to life the decades-spanning relationship between Kayleen and Doug in a production that transforms physical limitation into theatrical strength.

The play follows Kayleen and Doug’s relationship across 30 years, jumping back and forth through time as they navigate the space between friendship and something more profound. Their connection begins in a school nurse’s office at age eight, where Doug’s latest misadventure (riding his bike off the roof) meets Kayleen’s chronic stomach problems. “Does it hurt?” becomes their refrain, a question that evolves from childhood curiosity to something far more complex as the years progress. Joseph‘s script deliberately scrambles chronology, showing us these two at ages 8, 23, 13, 28, 18, 33, 23 again, and 38. We see them navigate first kisses, sexual assault trauma, suicide attempts, comas, and countless self-inflicted injuries. But the arguably deepest wound at the center of their relationship is society’s insistence that their connection must be either platonic or romantic, with no space for the messy reality in between.

The black box configuration, with audience members mere feet from the action, transforms the 50-seat theater into a pressure cooker of emotion. When Doug shows Kayleen their mingled vomit in a trash can, declaring “look how our throats all mixed together,” the moment is simultaneously revolting and weirdly romantic. The overhead screens, conceived by video installation artists Laia Cabrera and Isabelle Duverger, provide temporal anchors through pop culture references while their abstract imagery (religious iconography, blood cells, kaleidoscopic patterns) creates a dreamlike atmosphere that enhances the play’s non-linear structure.

Director Catriona Rubenis-Stevens has found gold in constraint, turning Art House’s compact black box theater into an arena for emotional warfare where less truly becomes more. Her staging strips away theatrical pretense — no elaborate sets, just raw humanity. The result is a masterclass in intimate direction that proves you don’t need a Broadway budget to break hearts.

Under Rubenis-Stevens’ guidance, Ashley Renée-Scott delivers a Kayleen of remarkable complexity — her initial teenage hostility gradually revealing itself as armor against a world that has taught her vulnerability equals weakness. Mario C. Brown’s Doug radiates a desperate optimism that makes his eventual defeat all the more crushing. Together, they create a chemistry that paradoxically intensifies the more they try to deny it.

What makes this production particularly devastating is how Renée-Scott and Brown make palpable the cost of emotional intimacy denied. In one especially powerful scene, an adult Doug begs Kayleen to touch his injured eye socket, crying out “you can make it better!” She responds with cutting clarity: “I’m not here to take care of you. I’m not a healer.” The moment captures the central tragedy — these two people who feel each other’s pain so acutely they might as well share one nervous system, yet remain unable to fully bridge the gap between them.

The play’s non-linear structure could easily become confusing, but the performers navigate the temporal shifts with remarkable clarity, subtly aging and de-aging through posture, energy, and impossibly quick changes. A particularly gutting sequence moves from their teenage first kiss to years later, when Kayleen visits a comatose Doug, finally admitting her feelings when he can’t hear them: “The top 10 best things anyone’s ever done for me have all been done by you.”

What emerges is not just another story about codependency, but a deeper examination of how we categorize and therefore limit human connection. Doug and Kayleen’s tragedy isn't just that they can't figure out how to be together — it’s that society has given them no framework for the kind of love they share, one that transcends conventional boundaries between friendship and romance. Yet amidst all the injury, there’s something beautiful in watching two people who feel each other’s pain so completely. As Kayleen finally admits, “I don't care. I’ll believe anything.” In those moments when they allow themselves to truly connect — whether it’s through shared childhood memories of watching hockey players “fly around” the rink or through the simple act of remembering how the “playground looks so pretty” at dawn — we glimpse the possibility of a love that defies categorization. It’s messy, dangerous, and absolutely essential.

To post a comment, you must register and login.