CASPER
THE FRIENDLY GHOST
Perhaps the most original American play yet written about the Iraq War is Rajiv Joseph's "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo," a 2010 Pulitzer finalist coming to Broadway in the spring with Robin Williams in the title role.
In the meantime, the playwright offers further evidence of his distinctive voice with the disquieting two-hander "Gruesome Playground Injuries." It might be the best play title since "God of Carnage," and would be an almost equally fitting tag for Yasmina Reza's bloody smackdown of middle-class mores, currently being filmed by Roman Polanski. But while a kids' schoolyard skirmish was a springboard from which Reza explored festering incivility, Joseph uses the nasty wounds and upset stomachs of children to etch the unbreakable pattern of a morbid long-term friendship.
From age 8 through 38, Doug and Kayleen are each other's protectors, unable to overcome their frictions nor to ignore their mutual magnetism. Pablo Schreiber (seen in the new FX series "Lights Out") and Jennifer Carpenter (of Showtime's "Dexter") negotiate that uneasy push-pull with as much raw tenderness as tender rawness. Literally, these two hurt.
In Second Stage's sleek production, running through February 20, the play is directed with a savvy balance of mordant humor and romantic longing by Scott Ellis. A dab hand at comedy, lately much in demand in television, his recent credits include "Modern Family," "Hung," "30 Rock," "The Good Wife" and "Weeds."
Joseph breaks the action down into non-chronological chapters at five-year intervals, each one identified by the protagonists' age and injuries. We first meet them at 8 in the nurse's office, when Doug has ridden his bike off the school roof, splitting open his forehead. Kayleen's complaint is a more pedestrian bout of nausea, but they find a shared interest in cuts, scars, aches and abrasions, sealed when Doug allows her to touch his gaping head gash.
Not since Holly Hunter and James Spader courted mutilation in David Cronenberg's "Crash" have two people embraced pain with such fetishistic fascination.
In the meantime, the playwright offers further evidence of his distinctive voice with the disquieting two-hander "Gruesome Playground Injuries." It might be the best play title since "God of Carnage," and would be an almost equally fitting tag for Yasmina Reza's bloody smackdown of middle-class mores, currently being filmed by Roman Polanski. But while a kids' schoolyard skirmish was a springboard from which Reza explored festering incivility, Joseph uses the nasty wounds and upset stomachs of children to etch the unbreakable pattern of a morbid long-term friendship.
From age 8 through 38, Doug and Kayleen are each other's protectors, unable to overcome their frictions nor to ignore their mutual magnetism. Pablo Schreiber (seen in the new FX series "Lights Out") and Jennifer Carpenter (of Showtime's "Dexter") negotiate that uneasy push-pull with as much raw tenderness as tender rawness. Literally, these two hurt.
In Second Stage's sleek production, running through February 20, the play is directed with a savvy balance of mordant humor and romantic longing by Scott Ellis. A dab hand at comedy, lately much in demand in television, his recent credits include "Modern Family," "Hung," "30 Rock," "The Good Wife" and "Weeds."
Joseph breaks the action down into non-chronological chapters at five-year intervals, each one identified by the protagonists' age and injuries. We first meet them at 8 in the nurse's office, when Doug has ridden his bike off the school roof, splitting open his forehead. Kayleen's complaint is a more pedestrian bout of nausea, but they find a shared interest in cuts, scars, aches and abrasions, sealed when Doug allows her to touch his gaping head gash.
Not since Holly Hunter and James Spader courted mutilation in David Cronenberg's "Crash" have two people embraced pain with such fetishistic fascination.
