Since the HBO cut-throat corporate family drama Succession ended its run in 2023, we’ve seen a steady succession of series stars make their way to the New York stage: Peter Friedman in Job and Jeremy Strong in An Enemy of the People in 2024; Sarah Snook in The Picture of Dorian Gray and Kieran Culkan in Glengarry Glen Ross in 2025; and now, Nicholas Braun off-Broadway in Gruesome Playground Injuries, a revival of Rajiv Joseph’s contemplative 2009 two-hander. (Aside: Consider this my official petition to cast Brian Cox as Leontes and J. Smith Cameron as Paulina in The Winter’s Tale next summer at the Delacorte.)
A flash-forward, flashback drama chronicling three decades in the life of a pair of childhood friends, Doug (Braun) and Kayleen (the dynamite Kara Young), and the pain—physical and mental—bonding them together, Gruesome Playground Injuries toggles back and forth at 10- and 15-year chunks, but always moves, fascinatingly, in a nonlinear mode. We first meet the pals at age 8, then jump to age 23, move back to age 13, forward to age 28…and so on and so on.
Gruesome Playground Injuries may not be the prolific Joseph’s best play—that would be Animals Out of Paper, an elegiac ode to origami—or his most ambitious (probably the Russian history–based Describe the Night, which spans 90 years and clocks in at three hours). However, it might be his best known, at least in certain circles: If you’re a high school drama-club kid or a college theater major, you or someone you know has recited a chunk of Kayleen’s hospital-room scene, when she’s pouring her heart out to a hospitalized Doug. “WHO GETS STRUCK BY F**KING LIGHTNING!?” she yells. “ON THEIR F**KING ROOF!”
Braun, who acquits himself well, may be a stage novice, but he’s smart enough to know that the way to raise his game is by going toe-to-toe with one of the best in the business: back-to-back Tony winner (Purpose, Purlie Victorious) and consecutive four-year nominee Kara Young. Playing Kayleen at age 8, bouncing on the bed in her pigtails and school uniform, sighing overdramatically, swinging her feet, calling Doug “stupid” and telling him to “shut up”—basic 8-year-old things—she wins our hearts immediately. She’s equally persuasive as teenage and adult Kayleen, a broken woman whose (invisible) pain runs far deeper than we can ever know. Braun and Young are both especially good age 13, when, behind the scenes of a school dance, they bond over a trash can. Literally. (Squeamish viewers, be warned: There is a fair amount of vomit flying around in that scene.)
Throughout the 90-minute show, adrenaline junkie Doug acquires countless physical injuries: a “broken” face, a “jacked-up” ankle, assorted missing teeth, an eye blown out, and any number of conditions that, combined, land him in a coma. Between scenes, Young bandages Braun’s wounds, blackens his front teeth, etcetera. (The visible costume and scene changes—which deepen the characters’, and actors’, connection—are not a conceit of Neil Pepe’s production; they’re spelled out in the stage directions.) Kayleen’s maladies, you’ll note, aren’t of the bleeding-from-the-head variety. But just because they’re hard to see doesn’t mean they don’t hurt as much—if not more. Definitely more.
Gruesome Playground Injuries opened Nov. 23, 2025, at the Lucille Lortel Theatre and runs through Dec. 28. Tickets and information: gruesomeplaygroundinjuries.com
