CAST (Company of Actors in Streamlined Theater) caps off their season with the play ‘Gruesome Playground Injuries’ by Rajiv Joseph. It’s a deceptively simple play with only two characters in just roughly a little bit over an hour but there’s a wealth of humanity that is loaded within as it explores the literally painful love story of two friends over the course of 30 years. I say literally because we meet the two friends – Kayleen and Doug – in five-year intervals, from 8 to 38, and one of them is always hurt. It wasn’t kidding when it included “gruesome” in its title.

Directed by Nelsito Gomez, the play makes full use of Mirror Studios’ wall mirror for actress Missy Maramara to write down the character’s ages and the location of each scene before it starts. The two actors, with Topper Fabregas playing Doug, change in front of the audience, going down to their underwear, making them vulnerable and exposed as the characters seem to fall into whenever they meet each other. The actors barely ever leave the stage (except for one scene shift when Fabregas leaves entirely), which means we get to see them put on their make-up and prosthetics for whatever injury their characters have gotten into before the scene begins.

From 8 to 38, we see Kayleen and Doug navigate through very tough life experiences. Doug seems to get himself into situations where he can fall from very high places or maybe even lose an eye. Kayleen’s personal life – with her boyfriends and her parents – leads her to self-harm. In the scenes that makes up the play, set in a non-linear order, we catch the two find solace and comfort in each other and yet unable to say how they really feel, unless the timing is all wrong. These are characters who are so used to being broken, whether physically or emotionally, that they seem to be more comfortable leaning into the hurt than moving towards the safe space that they’ve made for each other.

Despite the blood, the pain of their circumstances, and their inability to be truly honest with each other (and with themselves), the play is actually hilarious. Kayleen and Doug, on paper, are really sad and miserable people but when they are together, they bring out the best in each other and their wit and their candor are as true as any two best friends can be that it fills the stage with so much warmth. This is predicated by the effortless performances of Topper Fabregas and Missy Maramara.

What’s incredible about the two as he easily they shift from 8 to 38, catching the joys and foolishness of our teenage years to the desperate rush of our 20s when we feel like everything is at stake, to the exhausted and jaded 30s when your life is not what you imagined it to be. All of these complex layers of people in these ages, the two actors are able to personify so perfectly while still adding on the added layer of these two specific broken individuals into the plate. It’s amazing to watch. And the fact that the play moves back and forth through time, means that Fabregas and Maramara must go from an adult back to a teen and then back to an adult again.

The effect is captivating.

‘Gruesome Playground Injuries’ is not an easy play to digest. It asks you to laugh with (not at) these two poor individuals as they try to sort out their lives while dealing with disappointment and pain, scene after scene. The characters make fun of their injuries, some of them almost fatal, but it’s a coping mechanism that they both cling on to. They try to find humor in the brokenness of their lives but what ends up being amplified is how badly these two people really want to live. This is a daring play, and I honestly would never have thought to have been able to see a play like this in the Philippine theater scene. It’s bold. It’s mature. It’s surprisingly what we need now as world events are constantly making us think about our mortality. 

My Rating:

Gruesome Playground Injuries will run on November 29, 30, and December 1, 2024. Get your tickets here. For inquiries about reservations or partnerships, contact gruesome.mnl@gmail.com.

Please note that the show includes themes and imagery of violence, self-harm, suicide, sexual assault, abuse, injuries, and blood.