In high school, I attended every single theater production my school put on. Many of them may not have been great, but they always had heart. That’s what kept me coming back. After graduating college and moving to Bushwick last year, my interest in plays was piqued once more. A friend of mine was acting in the premiere of a new play in Chelsea and, although I won’t say what it was, it gave me a lot to think about.
This play consumed my mind; I would often bring it up when hanging out with my friends, on dates, to my coworkers, anyone who would listen. What stood out to me was the lack of humanity in the script. For me, plays have always been about humanity, this real experience everyone in the theater shares.
Soon enough, I was given the opportunity to write about a production of Gruesome Playground Injuries, the Rajiv Joseph play, that was being put on by Sour Grape Productions in their Vino Theater (274 Morgan Ave.), sometime after it had been revived in Succession star Nicholas Braun’s off-Broadway debut. The play tells the story of Kayleen and Doug skipping through thirty years as they navigate their lives and complicated feelings for each other. It is a fairly simple concept that involves solely those two.
The set in the Vino matched the simplicity of the premise, consisting of a doctor’s office examination table, with a caseless pillow and a peeling office chair. On the side of the stage, the audience could see a rack and folding table for the costumes and props. In between each time skip, the lighting design shifted to blue, allowing us to see them change costumes and interact with each other, still in character.
At first, I was unsure if this was a staging choice or simply due to a lack of space in the room. When I spoke to actor/director Genny Yosco, who runs Sour Grape, she said she wanted the production to show the moments beyond the stage. The execution was unclear.
In the opening scene, both characters are eight. How the actors played this being eight was tonally dissonant. Yosco adopted a higher pitch and didn’t fully pronounce words, seeming more like the idea of a child instead of a real one. In contrast, Harrison McClure-Womack, who played Doug, barely seemed to change his voice at all. The contrast extended the age gap between them.
The details of the play itself were reminiscent of a small town. The Catholic school, the owl, Kayleen feeling stuck while Doug left for college, the repeating themes of climbing trees and buildings, the simplicity of the doctor’s office, walking through the mud drunk, and so on. It left me homesick for Michigan. I read about Yosco and her own youth (she was from West Virginia) and it seemed she drew on her background to create the play’s atmosphere.
Yosco’s performance was characterized by restraint. Her strength was performing the physical embodiment of anxiety, showing clearly what Kayleen was facing. She felt like someone I knew from summer camp, but maybe wasn’t quite friends with. McClure-Womack’s performance had a certain schoolboy charm that matched well with the character. There was a constant push and pull between their body language that emphasized the tension already present in Joseph’s play.
After doing some research (scrolling through Instagram) about the two actors, I couldn’t help but notice they share an off-stage romance. For better or worse, I would say it affects the production as a whole and how the characters relate to one another. Some may say this blurs the lines between them as characters and actors; however, I found it quite human. There’s something real about wanting to act and play with the people closest to you.
Walking away from this play, I felt more human too. This was due to more than just the performances. There was care in every single step taken by Yosco and the rest of the team. This production of Gruesome Playground Injuries captured the heart that I was craving to see.
Gruesome Playground Injuries ran at the Vino Theater from September 10 to 13. Catch what else Sour Grape Productions is putting on here.
Ella Lado is a writer from Michigan, who now lives in Bushwick.
Photos courtesy of Sour Grape Productions.
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