Gruesome Playground Injuries

 Gruesome Playground Injuries
Lucille Lortel Theatre
November 26, 2025

Photo courtesy of Gruesome Playground Injuries

Rajiv Joseph’s Gruesome Playground Injuries had its Off-Broadway premiere in 2011.  It is now experiencing another Off-Broadway production at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, featuring two awe-inspiring actors who deliver enthralling performances.  Director Neil Pepe beautifully paces this non-sequential plot line, giving the audience a chance to connect the events and process the action.  Playwright Rajiv Joseph skillfully weaves touching scenes of caring and connection between his two characters, generating questions and intrigue.  This causes the audience to fully invest and hang onto every word. 

Doug (played by Nicholas Braun) first meets Kayleen (played by Kara Young) in the school nurse’s office.   They are eight years old.  Kayleen is there because she threw up.  Doug, in full Evil Knevel mode, rode his bicycle off the roof of the school.  His head is bloody and bandaged.  Kayleen asks to see his wound, then she asks to touch it.  We meet them over and over in the nurse’s office and various hospital emergency rooms through their adolescence, teen years, and adult lives.  Doug sprains his ankle at the school dance, loses his eye in a fireworks accident, and gets struck by lightning.  He asks Kayleen to touch his wound every time.  Since their first meeting, Doug has believed that she has the power to heal him.  Unfortunately, Doug is unable to reach inside Kayleen and heal the pain she carries.  

Kara Young & Nicholas Braun
Photo courtesy of Gruesome Playground Injuries

Nicholas Braun is daring, gullible, and winsome as Doug.  He tells Kayleen that his mother says he is
accident prone.  Kayleen says he’s just stupid for doing crazy things.  Mr. Braun exudes the mettle and gumption that makes it fully believable that Doug would courageously and recklessly jump into activities that cause him severe injury.  He and Kara Young develop an innate bond.  From the minute they lay eyes on one another in the first scene, when they are eight years old, they are viscerally connected.  As they get older, Kayleen continually pushes Doug away.  Ms. Young plays these moments with a compelling subtext and clear back story.  Kayleen’s dialogue offers glimpses into her turmoil.  The emotional weight is obvious.  The complex details of her past experiences are intrinsically understood.  This is the strength of Ms. Young’s performance.  While her physicality in each scene is lively and energetic, she persistently carries emotional baggage, which leers its ugly head at unexpected times.

Gruesome Playground Injuries is playing at the Lucille Lortel Theatre through December 28.  Don’t miss it!  

Domenick Danza

Purlie Victorious

 Purlie Victorious
 A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch
The Music Box
September 23, 2023 

Photo coourtesy of Purlie Victorious

The Broadway revival of Ossie Davis’s 1961 play, Purlie Victorious, is truly joyous.  Kenny Leon directs a stellar cast, with the right touch of style, melodrama, and grit that allows Ossie Davis’s writing to ring with truth, humor, and relevance.  

Purlie Victorious Judson (played by Leslie Odom, Jr.) searched for a young girl to pretend to be his deceased cousin so he could get a five hundred dollar inheritance that is being held by Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee (played by Jay O. Sanders).  He finds Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins (played by Kara Young) on his travels through Alabama, and brings her back to Georgia.  Missy Judson (played by Heather Alicia Simms) thinks Lutiebelle will pass as their deceased cousin, but her husband, Gitlow (played by Bille Eugene Jones), needs some convincing.  They almost pull it off until Lutiebelle signs the wrong name on the papers.  Purlie is on the run for trying to swindle Ol’ Cap’n Cotchpie, but comes back in force to preserve Lutiebelle’s reputation.

Leslie Odom, Jr., & Kara Young
Photo courtesy of Purlie Victorious

Leslie Odom, Jr. and Kara Young are great together.  Mr. Odom is full of life as Purlie.  His vitality fills the stage and energizes all the characters to take action.  Ms. Young portrays Lutiebelle as an innocent, nervous girl who transforms into a determined young woman.  She is willing to open up and take a risk, all due to Purlie’s inspiration.  These two actors have a great chemistry, and keep the audience fully engaged in the action of the story. 

Heather Alicia Simms & Billy Eugene Jones
Photo courtesy of Purlie Victorious

Heather Alicia Simms and Billy Eugene Jones are a strong pair as Missy and Gitlow Judson.  Their relationship is full of fire, and their timing is fast and sharp.  Jay O. Sanders creates a wicked villain in the character of Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee.  This role is played with a precise balance of humor and malice to keep it from being too dark.  There are also strong performances by Vanessa Bell Calloway as Idella Landy and Noah Robbins as Charlie Cotchipee.

This cast delivers a completely enjoyable experience of a gem of a play.  Purlie Victorious is playing at The Music Box.  Don’t miss it. 

  

Domenick Danza

Clyde’s

 Clyde’s
Second Stage Theater
The Helen Hayes Theater
December 29, 2021 

Photo courtesy of Second Stage Theater

Lynn Nottage successfully steps into a new genre with her play Clyde’s.  It is bold and funny, yet still packs Ms. Nottage’s signature strong social message.  Director Kate Whorisky finds the pace and energy to keep the action moving.  The cast brilliantly creates larger than life characters who carry a vivid sense of vulnerability and humanity.

Uzo Aduba & Ron Cephas Jones
Photo courtesy of Second Stage Theater

Clyde (played by Uzo Aduba) owns a sandwich shop on a “nondescript stretch of road, in Berks
County, Pennsylvania.”  Montrellous (played by Ron Cephas Jones) urges Clyde to up the quality of the sandwiches in order to get more attention for the restaurant.  Clyde refuses to taste  his handiwork.  Montrellous trains the other kitchen workers, Raphael (played by Reza Salazar) and Letitia (played by Kara Young), to create new sandwiches with scrupulously chosen ingredients.  When Jason (played by Edmund Donovan) is hired to work in the kitchen, the creative momentum is thrown off.  Jason has recently been released from prison and is covered with white supremacist tattoos.  One by one each character reveals their incarceration history.  This is what they all have in common.  They desperately need their jobs at Clyde’s to get their lives on track, yet Clyde brutally keeps them all in place.  When a customer demands relish on one of Montrellous’ gourmet sandwich creations, all hell breaks loose. 

The Full Cast of Clyde's
Photo courtesy of Second Stage Theater

Uzo Aduba is a powerhouse as Clyde.  Her character makes dramatic entrances throughout the play, surprising and terrorizing the kitchen staff.  She is extreme and overbearing.  She pushes each one of her workers to the edge.  Just as it reaches a high point, Ms. Aduba softens and backs away, making you think there is a heart within her.  She then returns even more full of fire.  

Ron Cephas Jones is poetic and calming as Montrellous.  Reza Salazar is dynamic as Rafael.  Kara Young is a ball of energy as Letitia.  Edmund Donovan portrays Jason like a bomb ready to explode.  These skilled actors create characters with a burning desire to get out of the confines of their circumstances.  They are people who made mistakes in their past.  Their stories are complicated and touching.  You yearn for them to break out of the restrictions Clyde callously imposes on them. 

In this play, Ms. Nottage uses the kitchen of the sandwich shop to represent the limitations people put on themselves for past mistakes.  Clyde is the power that holds them down, whether it be the voice within or societal and economic challenges.  As each character forgives themselves, they move on, releasing themselves from Clyde’s demoralizing control. 

The Second Stage Theater production of Clyde’s is a MUST SEE.  It is playing at the Helen Hayes Theater through January 16.  Get a ticket today! 

Domenick Danza