Keegan Theatre kicks off the 2026-2027 season in a bold way. While Rajiv Joseph’s “Gruesome Playground Injuries” may, at face value, seem a relatively simple piece about a childhood relationship that grows into so much more, the play ultimately proves a deeply haunting drama about the wounds we carry and the people, or person, we just can’t live without.
What makes Keegan’s production work so well is the chemistry between Irene Hamilton’s Kayleen and Jimmy Bartlebaugh’s Doug. The utter vulnerability of this two-hander means that Hamilton and Bartlebaugh must bear the weight of their characters’ decades-long evolution as they convince us that these two random people are deeply invested in one another’s fates, regardless of the hurt of the moment.
Hamilton’s Kayleen is at once sharp-edged and the perennially scared little child, always grasping for someone in her life to care. Her navigation of Kayleen’s various ages is brilliantly executed as all of Kayleen’s life moments factor into the intensity of the character’s hopeful and caustic outlook. Meanwhile, Bartlebaugh brings a loose, comic physicality to Doug. His recklessness provides the play’s more humorous moments, but with an underlying darkness that perfectly counters Kayleen’s more in-your-face aggression.
Co-directors Susan Marie Rhea and Kurt Boehm smartly keep the relationship front and center. Josh Sticklin’s hauntingly gorgeous playground set, augmented by Hailey LaRoe’s lighting and Brandon Cook’s sound design, proves a brilliant coup for a play that grounds itself in childhood as metaphor for the ugly realities we must inevitably face in our journeys through this world. Interestingly, the audience gets a quasi behind-the-scenes look at the piece inasmuch as the actors’ visible costume changes reinforce the sense that Kayleen and Doug are constantly shedding the various versions of themselves. The revelation of who we are when the lights go down, or behind closed doors, becomes a central part of understanding why these characters are who they are.
